Maybe klintoon was on the tarmac getting a haircut?
I haven't had a chance yet to write to United and O'Hare, but trust me, I WILL. By the time we reached our destination, Scranton PA, my legs were completely numb (a very dangerous condition) and I was totally dehydrated.
I had an almost identical experience at O'Hare two months ago. Some of the details were different, but the bottom line is that United, American and Delta all need to go under. And the entire air traffic control, airport workers, etc. need to be replaced. I'm certain the government security regulations, which keep NO ONE any safer, all played into this as well. We had the same "weather" excuses. That way, they can hold you hostage. Expect the frequency of these instances to increas, not to decrease.
http://www.saintsandheroes.com/thankyou/
Stay safe !
I know O'hare lost electric power in the passenger terminal one day last week. The outage reportedly affected terminals 2 & 3 the most, and United, which is in terminal 1, was relatively unaffected. Of course that's all relative. Especially if you're the one stuck on the tarmac
Ping! :-)
Didn't you know that United AirLines stands for U Aint Leaving.
As a frequent flyer, it usually is caused by one of two things:
1) They needed the gate for incoming flights, so they moved you out to the tarmac.
2) Once a plane leaves the gate, it has "left" on time. Pads their statistics regarding on time flights.
The flight crew may have been as lost as you were but they are normally a little more patient with the paying customers.
I actually believe that flying through O'Hara in the summer (afternoons) is more problematic than in the winter.
Two years ago we were trying to get out of Minneapolis, where it was perfectly beautiful...problem is virtually all the westbound flights originate on the eastern seaboard where they happened to be experiencing a Noreaster.
Since there we no planes to board, with them all being stuck on the east coast, at least we didn't have to sit in an aluminum tube for 4 hours.
Aliens. Sometimes on their way to Area 51, they get diverted to O'Hare's airspace...something about "subspace restrictions", I don't know.
Complain to the FAA. Last time United pulled one of their phony 'weather' stories on me I did that, and got an apologetic letter and a $50 coupon in the mail. It didn't make up for being stranded at O Hare, but it was better than nothing.
I wonder if this was during the bad storms on the East Coast. If so, then they probably had long back-ups becuase the planes delayed around the airports still had to land first.
These airports have departures and arrivals every few minutes so that if an airport can't land planes for an hour it creates huge backups across the country.
Had they not pushed away from the gate, they would have had to have let yall disembark to the comfort of that gate's seating area within the terminal, but I
reckon they needed that space for another flight.
I know you'll write a seething letter!
And oh how I'd love to read it! LOL!
I got delayed out of Midway for about two hours at the beginning of the month. It was weather-related for at least some of that time. Maybe it's just a really bad area to fly out of?
I got stuck on the ground at Newark for four hours on the evening of September 10, 2001. Ultimately cost me three unwanted days in Dallas due to getting in too late to continue on to Denver that day and then getting caught in the ground halt the next day. I hate delays!
United has almost the lowest comparative rating here:
http://www.epinions.com/search/mem_search_~0/search_vertical_~2522535/no_skip_~1?search_string=United+Airlines
Compare that to nonunion JetBlue:
http://www.epinions.com/search/?submitted_form=searchbar&search_string=jetblue&tax_name=&dyn_nav=0&dyn_nav_id=&search_vertical=2522535&searchbar_submit=Search
As the day progresses, delays grow.
I too will never fly through O'hare if I can help it. Saturday my wife and four month old had a connecting flight through O'Hare. Our direct flight to Raleigh/Durham on United sat for an hour due to a "computer problem" before they decided to deplane. We sat there in the airport for 4 hours before they finally decided to cancel the flight. They rescheduled us the next day on a flight through Newark. That flight sat on the tarmac for 2 1/2 hours before taking off due to "weather back east". We were fortunate to find that when we finally got to Newark, our connecting flight to RDU was delayed as well due to a mechanical problem. They switched planes and we finally got home around midnight...24 hours late!