Stuck in Chicago
My friends and family are dreading this blog report about our trip from Chicago! In fact, the reality is they cannot wait to read about the trip, which seemed simple enough at the start, but became a nightmare and extremely expensive.Traveling with my colleague, Dick Evans, we took Continental Airlines from Newark Liberty Airport to Chicago O’Hare . The plan was to arrive, attend a gala evening with the Spain National Tourism Office, conduct a few meetings with key clients, and then return to Newark via Midway Airport … sounds simple enough…right? WRONG! Everything was going as planned, and in fact, we had moved to an earlier flight and from Midway to O’Hare. As we drove our Dollar Rent-a-Car back to O’Hare, I actually toyed with taking my mother’s advice - “always call to see if the flight is on time” - but as a “seat of the pants, everything will work out” traveler, I did not heed this advice.
When we arrived for check-in and tried to retrieve our boarding passes from the CO kiosk, we were alerted to see an agent. This is where the fun began! Our Continental agent, Ricardo D. simply did not give a crap about our plight. I tried to negotiate, argue and debate and it did absolutely no good. We left to move down the counter to Joyce C. (who was next to the Continental supervisor) for assistance. Joyce, on the other hand, was helpful, professional and understanding to our plight. I negotiated a $50 taxi certificate (good on only some cabs), and we were off to Midway (original departure airport) on our original departure time and flight!
After waiting for a cabbie that would take the CO certificate (about 20 minutes), we were off and made very good time to Midway. Thinking we were home free, we boarded the flight, which was delayed due to weather, and backed off the gate. I chatted it up with my seatmates, serious conversations with the woman on my right about life, death and religion and talks about my trip to Iceland with the gentleman to the left. In a few minutes we were informed that we would taxi to a waiting area. All hell let loose as lighting streaked the sky and a torrent of rain covered the aircraft. After waiting two hours, we were informed that we were returning to the gate as the copilot was no longer legal to fly (too many hours in the air) and we would be rebooked on the next available flight.
I immediately went into self-defense mode and called Continental reservations to be rebooked. First time, I was disconnected as I was walking (quickly) through the terminal to get to the ticket counter. I called again when I was in the rebooking line (2 agents not three) in hopes of securing a seat for us both on another flight. I finally got through and the next available flight with seats was 5:25 PM the next day. With much disappointment I took the reservation then opened my laptop to pickup on Midway’s wireless network to try to find two rooms for the evening. Other passengers were coming up empty via cell phone calls for rooms, one guy was renting a car to drive to Indiana to find a room. Finally, Orbitz came through with a room at the Westin in Itasca for $179 per person. Feeling pleased that we would have a decent room with a heavenly bed while also patronizing a good client was a plus. Next we made our way down to the car rental area and booked an expensive car for about $130 for the day and proceeded from Midway in a terrible storm to Itasca.The best part of this bad day was the Westin, rooms were large and the restaurant for the next day (Shula’s) was wonderful. We took the next day to follow up on emails and have a leisurely day in the Chicago suburbs before our departure. We called CO during the day to check flight status and decided to leave a little early so we could go standby on a flight.As we drove to the airport, I called again and found out that all the flights were delayed and that our 5:25 was now departing at 8. This looked like a repeat of the night before and the weather was taking a turn.We made the executive decision to drive back, called Avis, the rate difference was only about $50, so we stopped and picked up a huge road atlas for $24.95 and started to drive. Traffic was terrible, and was we approached Midway, I decided to take a chance and call Southwest Airlines to see if they had availability to Philadelphia (not Newark). They had two seats on the 4:45 flight and we took them for $189 a piece (as you can see, the costs of this trip was mounting). So we took the exit onto Cicero Ave and dumped our Avis rental at Midway…yes, we’re back at Midway!Our flight boarded late, about 6:15pm and as we waited, we wondered if we had done the right thing. But we had, and SWA came through for me yet again. I will never say a bad thing about being in “A, B or C” boarding order.At Philadelphia International Airport, we picked up a Hertz econobox from the gold booth, where I drove to Yardley, PA to World Headquarters to pick up my car and head home. Unfortunately, Mr. Evans had to drive to Newark to pick up his car from long term parking.The Wall Street Journal had an article that same day about traveling in the summer, some people avoid it all together - business travelers, unfortunately, cannot.
-Fran Gallagher, publisher and CEO
