Flying to Europe without arriving there...

[Mr. Bloom]

Have you ever spent eight hours in a plane in the air(the equivalent of a trip to Europe) without actually arriving at your destination?

Left Phoenix at 1:05 and after eight hours in the plane and an unplanned visit to Minneapolis, I'm at an O'Hare hotel with 16 inches of snow and no luggage! I did put a toothbrush and blistex in my brief case, so I'm content!

Here's the joke: The flight crew missed their connection too.

• They were disappointed that they were missing their day in MIAMI...
• I told them I as missing my night in MYBED!

Silver figured that I'd be really mad...but what can you do???? It was interesting to see the handful of folks who were taking it out on the airline employees...who frankly handled the situation exceptionally well.

At the end of the day, 99% of the world would kill for the worst of my worries, but I do pity the poor folks from Chicago and Northern Indiana that have to live with this stuff all the time.

PS: I did reasonably well with my eating despite it all...and even got 30 minutes of vigorous exercise in Phoenix before leaving!!!

[crazycanuck]

Mr Silver sorry to hear you've been delayed!!

I hear you about flying times...the joys of living in the southern hemisphere
Let's see,how about Auckland to Vancouver..via Honolulu..it's 12hrs..

I'm sure DirtDiva will tell you all about flying from Christchurch-Singapore-London...

Don't even get me started on flying times from Perth....

Here's hoping the weather situation where you are improves!!
c

[Bad JuJu]

I'm sorry, too, to hear about your travel woes--that just sucks!

OTOH, I heartily applaud your excellent attitude in the face of an issue (weather) no one can do anything about except wait it out. It's not always easy to put our own irritating problems into perspective--bravo to you!

P.S. Did you get home yet?

[Duck on Wheels]

I once had a 36-hour trip from Trondheim to Tuscon, including cancelled flight, rerouting via Zurich, 4-hour (midlnight to 4am) "layover" in Newark with only one available hotel room (wound up sharing it with two mere acquaintances, one of them then chair of the Nobel Peace Prize committee -- should I have leaked to the papparazzi press that he wears silk pajamas? We probably got about an hour's sleep each on our respective rollaways, then back to the airport early to try to get our now invalid tickets accepted). Another 3 hour delay in Ft. Worth waiting out a thunderstorm (already on the plane ready for takeoff, with only a bag of peanuts each -- luckily I'd bought some giant chocolate bars at the tax free store; the 3 of us split one for lunch). We made it to the conference hotel just in time for me to present my paper, then I stumbled off to bed with still no news of my luggage until the concierge phoned 4 hours later to say that the suitcase had arrived. I never did get my wheel set back, although the airline kept putting me off on the refund saying "We've found it! It's in [fill in random city here]." Finally I said I was giving up on them, had bought a new one, and here was the bill. They paid it.

Ah the joys of travel.

[silver]

Mr. finally made back to Hisbed today! Spent the night in Chicago. Arrived here after only about an hour delay. I had to coordinate with the kids being on 2 hour delay to school cause I borrowed Miss silver's 4-wheel drive Jeep.

His fight home from Phoenix should have only been about a 2 or 34 hour fight at the most. They had to be put into circling holding patterns because...I suppose Chicago wasn't accepting flights. They flew their holding pattern for so long that they were running out of fuel so that's why they landed in Minn.

They probably could have delivered all the passengers safely to their respective destinations in that time. Only thing was....Mr. said that it was a 757 and our runway here in little town Indiana can't land a 757.

Oh, well, he's home now. We had a nice Valentine's Day Lunch and he'll be commuting back to b'town soon.

[mimitabby]

Gee, Mr Silver, why didn't you just fly to Europe? It would have been more fun!
always helpful;

m

[pyxichick]

Reminds me of the vacation I took at the Detroit airport.

We were flying from Mpls. to New Orleans and had a connection in Detriot, which is sort of out of the way, but it was NorthWest, so there you go. Anyway, it didn't occur to us that just because MN and LA are in the same time zone, that our connection wouldn't necessarily be in the same time zone.

So we sat around the airport killing time during the hour we thought we had between flights and missed it. It was during Easter break, so there were no more flights to New Orleans. We ended up flying back to MN and starting over again the next day. But only after spending twelve lovely hours in the Detroit airport playing cards and being very crabby.

I wish we could have some of that snow up here. Sad that they are now routing planes to Minneapolis because we're the only place in the midwest with NO snow!

[Mr. Bloom]

Gee, Mr Silver, why didn't you just fly to Europe? It would have been more fun!
always helpful;

m

Forgot my passport...they have soldiers with uzzies at the airports there! Besides, why would I pass up a $13 Turkey and Swiss on Baguette in Minneapolis in February and then in the same night get the chance to pay $279 for a $95 hotel room at O'Hare?

Reminds me of the vacation I took at the Detroit airport.

Wow! That's an oxymoron!