“Where’s Laurence?” began the email I got after 10 p.m. Nov. 11.
“Hopefully, you are not stuck in an airport but rather are safely home tucked in bed,” it continued.
Unfortunately, I was not in bed yet.
Fortunately, I’d gotten home safely from my weekend trip to officiate youth soccer games with my son where he lives in Evansville, Indiana. It was a treat.
And I’d ― not according to my original plan — made it through the government shutdown-related gantlet at O’Hare International Airport in Chicago, which saw 121 cancellations and 281 delays as of 4 p.m. Nov. 11, according to FlightAware and USATODAY.
It turns out Sean Duffy, U.S. transportation secretary, also was at O’Hare, telling reporters “if the government doesn’t move to reopen soon, the flight delays and disruptions American travelers have experienced so far will be considered ‘tiddlywinks’,” USATODAY reported.
He said that after the Senate passed a bill to end the government shutdown, which kept air traffic controllers and transportation security officers from getting paid. Some of those federal workers did not come to work, making cancellations and delays necessary for safety reasons, Duffy said.
Breeze advance notice appreciated
As I wrote last week, Breeze Airways alerted me Nov. 7 my Nov. 10 flight from Evansville to Orlando was canceled because of what its email called “a requirement from the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).”
I appreciated the advance notice and took the airline up on its offer of a refund, given its next flight to Orlando wouldn’t be until Nov. 14.
I tried to find a flight home from Evansville Regional Airport, a nice, convenient facility, reminiscent of a smaller Melbourne Orlando International. Evansville has only about 10 flights a day — mostly on smaller planes to Charlotte, Atlanta and Chicago.
I was due to fly out late Nov. 10, but found a one-way flight on American Airlines first thing Nov. 11 through Charlotte. The ticket cost me $243 more than my Breeze ticket and more than my round-trip airfare using Breeze and Allegiant.
No problem. Even though I’d have to cancel a soccer match Nov. 11 in Florida, I was just happy to find a flight home, even if there was a connection. I always try to avoid connections.
American cancels itinerary, but …
Over the weekend, friends and family kept asking me if my new flight had been canceled, given Duffy’s statements last week saying flight operations would be cut by 4% Nov. 7, gradually increasing to 10% by Nov. 14 if the shutdown didn’t end.
Sure enough, about 6 p.m. Nov. 9, American emailed me to say my itinerary had been canceled. The company immediately followed up with a second email, asking me to accept rebooking (with better seats) onto a flight that left Evansville 30 minutes later, headed 358 miles north to O’Hare, then to Orlando, getting me in about an hour later.
I’d never been to O’Hare, and had heard only horror stories about the size and delays of an airport cited as the fourth-busiest in the nation and tenth-busiest in the word.
No need to worry, I figured. All I could control was getting from one gate to the next on time, even if, with less than an hour to spare, I might have to run like O.J. Simpson in those old Hertz commercials.
Flying on Veterans Day works out
I got to Evansville an hour before my 7:10 a.m. flight. There was no line to check my bag or get through security. I was thankful for the transportation security officers who were there. On board, the pilot told us there’d be a 10-minute delay to de-ice the plane, then maybe 20 minutes’ more delay because of traffic at O’Hare.
Still, the plane got in on time. I had to walk only about 15 minutes to my next flight, which remained on schedule.
O’Hare was busy, but no worse than anything I’ve seen in Atlanta, Charlotte, Newark or Philadelphia. We got to Orlando, which about 2 p.m. had lots of folks lined up at gates ready to go, and others sitting in random areas. It was busy, but the security lines were fine.
By the time I got to the baggage claim area, I waited about 2 minutes before seeing mine. I didn’t even have to wait long to catch a parking shuttle.
I was thankful, especially after reading about the experience of Jill Schildhouse, a travel journalist who wrote on Yahoo.com about her issues Nov. 10 navigating O’Hare between Toronto and Phoenix. She and her friends, heading to various locations, were caught up in same-day delays and cancellations.
Odds of getting where you need to go pretty good
Then I started thinking about the perspective pilots reminded me of when I told them about my re-booking.
If you are on one of the 10% of flights canceled, it’s going to be inconvenient — a significant issue for some people, but not life or death. But it’s only 10% of flights. O’Hare has 1,153 flights a day.
That means, barring non-shutdown issues, O’Hare will still handle more than 1,000 flights a day. Only 115 — or 1 in 10 — will be impacted. Those 90% chances of a successful flight are pretty good.
Folks will have their travel-horror stories ― and many more will have them leading up to Thanksgiving if the U.S. House doesn’t agree to the Senate bill soon.
But the vast majority of folks get where they need to get.
Myself included ― eventually.
This column reflects the opinion of Laurence Reisman. Contact him via email at larry.reisman@tcpalm.com, phone at 772-978-2223, Facebook.com/larryreisman or Twitter @LaurenceReisman.
This article originally appeared on Treasure Coast Newspapers: How I survived Evansville flight cuts, O’Hare, got back to Florida amid shutdown | Opinion
Reporting by Laurence Reisman, Treasure Coast Newspapers / Treasure Coast Newspapers
USA TODAY Network via Reuters Connect
