What a travel week
Oh, my... this was a horrible travel week.
I was scheduled to fly Bloomington (BMI) to Chicago (ORD) to Pittsburgh (PIT) to Tuesday, then PIT to ORD on Wednesday and ORD to BMI on Thursday morning. (I couldn't get all the way back to BMI Wednesday because of flight timings).
Tuesday morning I get an automated call that my 10AM BMI-ORD flight was canceled (which means I would miss my ORD-PIT flight). I was rescheduled on the 5PM BMI-ORD flight and 9:30PM ORD-PIT flight. So that's 1 cancel and 1 missed flight. Around noon, I got another call that my 5PM BMI-ORD flight was canceled. Since it was noon, I decided just to rent a one-way car and drive up to Chicago (about 3 hours) to catch my ORD-PIT flight.
Turns out the ORD-PIT flight was delayed for various reasons for 2 1/2 hours. We took off at midnight. I finally got to the hotel and my head hit the pillow at 3:45 AM local time. 2 cancels and 1 missed flight and 1 delayed flight isn't horrible, but that was only the outbound portion of the trip.
Wednesday afternoon I got a call that my PIT-ORD flight was canceled and I was booked on the 6AM Thursday flight. So now I had to cancel my hotel room in Chicago and find one in Pittsburgh (which wasn't easy - the NCAA Frozen Four was going on). 3 cancels now.
Later Wednesday night I got a call that my 6AM PIT-ORD flight was canceled (that's 4). I was booked on another airline PIT-ORD for Thursday morning so I could still catch my ORD-BMI flight.
When I got to the airport Thursday morning, I wasn't able to check in to my flight. I had to go back to the first airline to have them push the ticket through. I go back to the first airline and, after a lot of looking and calling, they figured out what the problem was. Because I hadn't actually flown that BMI-ORD flight (which was canceled twice) my ticket was hung up. It took a while for that to be released. Once it was released I was able to get ticketed on the other airline PIT-ORD. But things took so long that now it was close to my flight time.
I was able to bypass the security line with the help of the ticketing agent and ran to my gate only to see them shut the door. No chance of re-opening. And no chance of getting to ORD in time to make my ORD-BMI flight. So now I'm up to 4 canceled flights and 3 missed flights (plus the 1 delay).
I went back to the first airline and tried to see if there was another hub besides ORD that I could fly through. There was, but the flight to Bloomington was full. I asked "can I get to Peoria?" (that's about an hour's drive away). There were seats there. So I ended up flying PIT-DFW-PIA for my trip home (you can now probably guess the airline, but I won't mention it by name). That trip went very smoothly - a minor delay on the last leg, but nothing unusual.
In total, I was booked on 10 different flights and flew on 3 of them:
I was scheduled to fly Bloomington (BMI) to Chicago (ORD) to Pittsburgh (PIT) to Tuesday, then PIT to ORD on Wednesday and ORD to BMI on Thursday morning. (I couldn't get all the way back to BMI Wednesday because of flight timings).
Tuesday morning I get an automated call that my 10AM BMI-ORD flight was canceled (which means I would miss my ORD-PIT flight). I was rescheduled on the 5PM BMI-ORD flight and 9:30PM ORD-PIT flight. So that's 1 cancel and 1 missed flight. Around noon, I got another call that my 5PM BMI-ORD flight was canceled. Since it was noon, I decided just to rent a one-way car and drive up to Chicago (about 3 hours) to catch my ORD-PIT flight.
Turns out the ORD-PIT flight was delayed for various reasons for 2 1/2 hours. We took off at midnight. I finally got to the hotel and my head hit the pillow at 3:45 AM local time. 2 cancels and 1 missed flight and 1 delayed flight isn't horrible, but that was only the outbound portion of the trip.
Wednesday afternoon I got a call that my PIT-ORD flight was canceled and I was booked on the 6AM Thursday flight. So now I had to cancel my hotel room in Chicago and find one in Pittsburgh (which wasn't easy - the NCAA Frozen Four was going on). 3 cancels now.
Later Wednesday night I got a call that my 6AM PIT-ORD flight was canceled (that's 4). I was booked on another airline PIT-ORD for Thursday morning so I could still catch my ORD-BMI flight.
When I got to the airport Thursday morning, I wasn't able to check in to my flight. I had to go back to the first airline to have them push the ticket through. I go back to the first airline and, after a lot of looking and calling, they figured out what the problem was. Because I hadn't actually flown that BMI-ORD flight (which was canceled twice) my ticket was hung up. It took a while for that to be released. Once it was released I was able to get ticketed on the other airline PIT-ORD. But things took so long that now it was close to my flight time.
I was able to bypass the security line with the help of the ticketing agent and ran to my gate only to see them shut the door. No chance of re-opening. And no chance of getting to ORD in time to make my ORD-BMI flight. So now I'm up to 4 canceled flights and 3 missed flights (plus the 1 delay).
I went back to the first airline and tried to see if there was another hub besides ORD that I could fly through. There was, but the flight to Bloomington was full. I asked "can I get to Peoria?" (that's about an hour's drive away). There were seats there. So I ended up flying PIT-DFW-PIA for my trip home (you can now probably guess the airline, but I won't mention it by name). That trip went very smoothly - a minor delay on the last leg, but nothing unusual.
In total, I was booked on 10 different flights and flew on 3 of them:
- Tue 10AM BMI-ORD - canceled
- Tue 1PM ORD-PIT - missed
- Tue 5PM BMI-ORD - canceled
- Tue 9:30PM ORD-PIT - delayed 2.5 hours, made the flight
- Wed 8:30PM PIT-ORD - canceled
- Thu 6AM PIT-ORD - canceled
- Thu 6:30AM PIT-ORD (other airline) - missed
- Thu 9AM ORD-BMI - missed
- Thu 7AM ORD-DFW - made the flight
- Thu 10AM DFW-PIA - made the flight
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