Captive at O'Hare

In July of 2006, I helped with a denominational event called CHIC. The event required a lot of air travel. If you fly enough, you get some really good stories, none of them good. Here is one of them.

Several of us who worked at CHIC boarded our plane after the event and left the Knoxville terminal. We pulled away expecting to take off, however we all sat near the end of the runway for what seemed like an hour before receiving clearance to fly to Chicago. The flight was uneventful but I arrived too late to catch my connection to San Francisco. Since I sensed this would happen, I was smart enough to get on the standby list for the next flight out. This comes with seasoning.

Making my presence known, the United staff were very nice and gave me priority status but made me wait right by their desk. I was starving but unable to go get any food. But being a man of some girth, I knew I would not starve. But I did have a killer headache. I eventually got on the plane and even got to sit in Economy Plus giving me an extra 5 inches of legroom.

There were 80 passengers waiting for 14 slots. God is good. Unfortunately I was given a 'B' seat, right between two other guys. The man on my left was a devout and kosher Jew. The man on my right was a devout and practicing Muslim. Sounds like some kind of a joke. "A kosher Jew, a Muslim, and a Christian pastor were on a plane..." I digress. We pulled away from the gate and I immediately started to listen to the pilot talk on the special nerd channel on my headphones. Being a pilot myself, and knowing pilot talk, I immediately sensed trouble.

Several planes were shutting down. We turned a corner on a taxiway and then I realized what was really happening. There were more than 150 airliners of every make and size sitting in very creative places all over the taxiways on our side of O'Hare. We were waiting for a thunderstorm to the west to leave. I immediately thought of our fearless event leader, Kris, who I knew was also waiting in this unbelievable mess waiting to get back to Minneapolis. The pilot announced that he did not know how long the thunderstorm would take to clear out. He shut the engines off and we waited.

As I listened in on all the pilots talk, I heard that some planes had been waiting over 2 hours and were beginning to run out of gas. The long work of getting these planes off the taxiways and back to the gates began. It was a mess. One flight going to Amsterdam was on its second refuel. I knew the wait would be long. Actually, it turned into 4 hours and 5 minutes. This happened because we got wedged between planes that could not be easily moved.

Five hours later we flew into the dissipating thunderstorm. After some bumping around the flight smoothed out. I was starving so the peanuts and Bloody Mary Mix was fantastic. As the buy-a-meals got to me, they ran out. I was greatly bummed. I was offered another bag of snack mix. Shortly thereafter, they ran out of those too.

The Jewish gentleman on my left made known he really did not like Republican Evangelicals. Since I am a Democrat, I was half O.K. The man on my right did not like infidels of any kind and could not understand why the world hated Muslims. As soon as I politely could, I quickly jammed my earphones back into my head and pretended to go to sleep.

Part way through the flight I listened in on the pilot channel again and overheard the pilot and the chief flight attendant engage in a non-polite conversation regarding several passengers. Since they thought no one was listening, I informed them that we could hear everything they were saying. I earned a few kudos pointing this out. I was hoping they would reward me with a seat in first class but unfortunately that never crossed their minds.

We landed without incident. But since we had 54 passengers bound for Sydney aboard, they changed our gate to the international terminal. A very kind gesture since they held the Sydney bound flight for 3 hours awaiting our arrival. As we deplaned, celebrating our freedom, the entire plane was stopped short of the exit door on the jetway. The exit door was locked and we could not exit. Passengers frantically banged on the door and it took another 10 minutes waiting for someone to find a key to get the door opened. Then as we waited 45 minutes for our luggage to arrive, a United employee announced to us that our luggage would be sent to the domestic terminal, a ten minute walk away. Another hour passed and we finally got our luggage. My adventure ended as my head hit the pillow at 1:54 AM. That's almost 5 AM Tennessee time.

Lessons learned:
1) Always drive to Tennessee. It will be much faster.
2) Always bring a sack lunch.
3) Pretend to speak Swedish and not understand English.
4) Hold the next CHIC in California.