Stuck at the Airport

I'm at the Minneapolis airport right now waiting for my connecting flight. I should have been at my parent's place 3 hours ago. Here's what went down.

1. took the brown line to the orange line to midway at 7am and the trip was fine. Not crowded at all. When I got to Midway it was snowing very lightly.

2. got through security super fast and although the monitors around Midway showed that my flight was "on time" the screen at the gate said my flight was delayed 15 minutes. No biggie. My flight was scheduled originally for 9:10am, and now it was scheduled for 9:25.

3. At 9am the plane arrived at the gate and everything looked like it was fine. I board the plane later and that is when I noticed that it was now snowing more heavily.

4. I had to turn off my phone and I don't where a watch so I cannot be certain of the time we spent waiting for the plane to be de-iced, but I'd reckon 30 minutes. So I'd guess it was around 10:10am when we pulled away from the gate.

5. Midway looks like a winter wonderland. I saw three snow plods, each behind each other, going pretty fast while plowing a runway. Visibility at this point was pretty bad.

6. The pilot got on the speaker after sitting out on the tarmac for 40 minutes and told us that we expired the de-icing wait period of 40 minutes and that we had to head back to the gate for the plane to be inspected and perhaps de-iced again. He also said that visibility at Midway was so bad that planes could no longer land. Visibility minimum at Midway is 1 mile and apparently it was less than that at Midway. He mentioned the visibility minimum at O'Hare is 1/4 mile so planes were still landing and taking off at O'Hare. So at Midway, planes couldn't land but planes already there could take off. So our plane could take off but should anything wrong happen, we would need to land at the closest airport. Under normal conditions this would be the same airport you just took off from. But because we couldn't land at Midway, O'Hare was the alternative. But for some reason the digital data about the weather conditions weren't being transmitted to our plane and that's why we were out on the tarmac for 40 minutes and that's why we had to go back to the gate to de-ice again.

7. After about 40 minutes of whatever, we pulled away from the gate again. The airport was deserted. There were no other planes at the airport. All the gates were empty. It was a crazy winter wonderland out there and the storm so bad it looked like the planet Hoth. It was so eerie but also kind of cool.

8. I arrived at Minneapolis at 1:30pm; my connection flight to Brainerd took off at noon. So I missed my connecting flight. The kick in the butt is that Brainerd's airport is so small that they only schedule two flight to Brainerd from Minneapolis per day. The first one being at noon. The next flight to Brainerd is at 9:20pm.

9. So I've been at this airport for 3 hours now and I've got a little less than 5 more hours of waiting ahead of me. If I rented a car, I could have been home by now. But that would mean calling Northwest Airlines to make sure they don't cancel my reservations on the return flights due to not being on the flight to Brainerd. It's a headache I didn't want to deal with; also with renting a car I'd have to drive back down to Minneapolis to return it and my return flight on Saturday are also super early so...

10. But I'm safe and warm in the airport and I'm able to surf the Internet and entertain myself while I wait.


Happy holidays everybody!