The Wandering Annals

Log 1: Plane Delays

Airports and flight plans laugh.

They laugh in thunderstorms, in blizzards, in fires, in tsunamis, in any natural disaster. They chortle at airplane malfunctions. They guffaw during workers' strikes.

They especially seem to get a proper belly laugh when it comes to me.

Since my early childhood, I have flown many, many times. Since my first flight alone in college, I have flown many, many, many more times. Three of them stick out, though not for any positive reason.

First, there's DFW (Dallas-Fort Worth.) Every single time I flew through DFW to get back to the Springs, I always got delayed in some way. Once, I had to call in to work and miss two classes because DFW kept me for a whole day. I watched as travellers boarded for Puerto Rico before I could finally leave myself.

Second, there's the time I tried to leave Ireland (albeit, reluctantly.) This one was based solely on the weather. Where Springfield cancelled my flight the day before the aforementioned flight because of a thunderstorm, my Aer Lingus trip to Edinburgh was delayed for two days because of a hurricane. Hurricane Irma must've wanted me to stay in the country as much as I did.

And now, there's the latest in a series of dear-Lord-give-me-patience travel moments.

We were meant to leave Springfield this morning at 6:05am. Thanks to a temporary problem in the cockpit - no specificity, just a "problem in the cockpit that will be fixed shortly" - we left a half-hour later than planned. Springfield had just started to rain.

I assume the flight went smoothly. I fell asleep shortly after takeoff and woke up with twenty minutes to land in Chicago. And then came Chicago. Neither Ray, nor myself, are favorable towards American. Neither Mom, nor myself, are terribly fond of flying through the Chicago - O'Hare airport. It's known for delay after delay, usually due to the weather - and sure enough, when we arrived, it was raining.

But the weather wasn't the issue when we landed. Since we left Springfield late, the plane arrived in Chicago late - yet, I still had plenty of time to make my connection to Harrisburg. Well, that's what the flight attendant said, anyway. She didn't have any idea of the issue we'd have getting off the plane.

First, the gate meant for the Springfield arrivals was now occupied by another. ORD looked for another gate, found one and then that gate ran into a problem with the jet-way. By the time we actually did disembark, I'd missed my flight by 10-15 minutes. Thankfully, American allowed me to easily grab a later flight on the app with no extra cost and no harried conversation with the flight agent.

And, anyway, I was on the complete opposite side of Terminal 3 from where I needed to be. (Oh, the charging ports don't work at the gate, either. I found a working port a couple gates down on the Spirit airline, headed towards Boston.)

I will now be departing for Harrisburg when I should've been landing.

Until the next flight. xx