Flying Through Hell

There is a reason people on the east and west coasts call the middle of the country, “the fly-over states.” Yeah, it smacks of elitism (Is that a bad thing?), but the truth of the matter is, it’s hard to get to cities in the Midwest, and unfortunately not a whole helluva lot there once you do.

I travel a lot for my job, to parts of the country I might otherwise never visit. This past weekend I had to go to Des Moines, Iowa to conduct a training with our affiliate there. Needless to say, there aren’t a lot of flights between New York City and Des Moines, but there are connecting flights that go through the air transportation equivalent of a black hole, otherwise known as Chicago’s O’Hare Airport.

I left my apartment at 1:15 PM ET on Saturday to head for LaGuardia, where my flight was to leave at 2:59. The first in a long line of unnecessary delays occurred when I approached the dreaded security area. A much-younger-than-me TSA nazi checked my boarding pass before entering the maze, then pulled me aside and told me I had to check the width of my carry-on against the metal frame they use as a guide. I “politely” protested, knowing that my bag has made many trips and fit many an airplane overhead. But this post-adolescent insisted despite my pleas. Frustrated as I was, I complied and although my bag didn’t fit the frame (it did fit the overhead compartment on the plane), I convinced him to let me through.

Boarding went as scheduled, the plane filled and they closed the doors to leave. That’s when the captain informed us of the weather-related delays at O’Hare, that were keeping planes headed there from taking off all over the country. We weren’t going to leave for another two hours, he informed us. But we’d stay on the plane!

I swear it seemed like we were out for a leisurely drive around the airport. For two hours, the pilot took us somewhere, but nowhere near a runway. I had time to take a complete nap and wake up again. Eventually we did take off, whereupon the pilot and flight attendants apologized for the delay and thanked us profusely for our patience. Then the flight attendant announced they’d be coming down the aisle with snacks, all for a fee. Two hours of waiting and not even a free bag of nuts.

As could be expected, by the time we got to Chitown, my connecting flight to Des Moines had left. A good two dozen of us on the New York leg had missed connections and the airline had a representative at the gate with a list of replacement flights for all of us, the frequency of airline delays makes them old hat at this sort of thing. O’Hare is no small place so I had to hustle my ass to the new gate and get re-ticketed. It was scheduled to leave at 7:20 PM CT, maybe an hour later from then. I sat down and rested for about 20 minutes before they announced the flight would be leaving from a new gate. Up I ran for a short jog over there, where shortly after settling down, a sign change revealed the flight would now be leaving at 7:45.

It did finally leave, and I did finally arrive in Des Moines some time after 9:00 PM. I called the hotel for their shuttle van and went out to wait for it and just as I did, a torrential downpour arrived. You remember the storms and flooding that recently hit the Midwest? Think a slightly smaller version. An hour and a half of waiting for the shuttle that never came and I realized I’d better find a cab. I did and this big ole fearless Iowa farmboy of a driver plowed through flooding that would have been up to my calf had I been walking. We literally couldn’t see past the front hood, but he kept on driving until we got to the hotel. Yeah, he got a big tip.

I won’t bore you with how the hotel restaurant was closed by the time I checked in or how long I had to wait for essentially snack food at the bar (while old Lionel Ritchie and Bee Gees hits played in the background), but I didn’t get to bed until close to midnight local time. And that was just the trip out.

My training was actually a piece of cake by comparison. Good work with some challenging, but good people, who do reinforce the image of Midwestern kindness. I apologize for my Eastern snobbery. I was also delighted to see so many Obama lawn signs and bumper stickers in such a predominantly White community.

But delays were again the order of the day for the trip home Monday, again thanks to O’Hare. Another two hour delay departing Des Moines, another delay in Chicago, another late arrival back in New York. As several of us on these various flights remarked to one another, the sad part is we’ve all come to expect this. There was next to no grumbling or complaining, just the resignation that this is the sorry state of commercial air travel in America. And it’s probably never going to get any better.