On Wednesday night, we drove to Johnstown and stayed over at my parents’ house and then drove to Pittsburgh on Thursday morning for a direct flight to Chicago. It’s now Friday morning and we’re in a Ramada in Syracuse, NY. The original plan had us in Chicago a day before we were going to meet up with some friends, so at 2:00, when United asked for volunteers to take a later flight (6:20), we jumped on it and agreed to be bumped in exchange for free ticket vouchers. So 4:00 rolls around and the very nice United representative tells us that they are getting a much smaller plane for the 6:20 flight and they are oversold by 25 seats — do we want to be bumped again? Well, not really since all of the other flights are full and our luggage is already in Chicago.

[I should give Kudos to the Pittsburgh International Airport. I haven't been through there in a very long time, but it's nicely designed, has good food options, and free WiFi.]

A bit later, the United representative tells us that she can route us through Syracuse to Chicago and we’d still get there on Thursday night. Great — so we get another set of free ticket vouchers and run to the Syracuse-bound US Airways plane. [Which, I should add, was a propeller plane from 1932 and had no air conditioning. It was like a sauna.] After a very hot 1-hour flight, we arrive in Syracuse (very sweaty) and head to the United counter to get our next boarding passes. The rather unpleasant United representative tells us that the plane for our flight to Chicago is having mechanical difficulties and we’ll have to wait until Friday morning. So we’re standing there sweaty from the flight, without luggage (no fresh clothes or toiletries), and further away from Chicago than when we started.

The upside is that they gave us hotel and meal vouchers. So we headed to the hotel for a nice quiet evening, hoping that we get to Chicago on Friday afternoon in one piece.

Tags: