I was down in Champaign, Illinois this past week for work.  I had flights booked from Toronto to Chicago to Champaign for the Monday. My 8:00 flight on United was delayed almost 3 hours due to unavailability of a flight crew, the plane was there, but the previous nights flight was also delayed and therefore they had to wait for the crew to get their required rest.

I had to re-book my connecting flight through our corporate travel centre, in April we switched to a new supplier and they are still working out their growing pains, which results in long periods of being on hold. I managed to re-book for 13:10 out of Chicago.

The cartoon above was pretty spot on. I got to my gate and it said we would be boarding in x number of minutes, well that time passed and they made an announcement they were waiting for the flight to land. A storm had gone through the O’Hare area and there were delays. Eventually they came on and said the flight to Champaign was cancelled. It was a smaller regional jet and due to the time it was holding to land it probably had to turn around due to low fuel. I got in line to re-book, I had a seat on the 18:45 flight to Champaign…the next day…Tuesday! Champaign is about a 3 hour drive from Chicago, so I headed to the car rentals. I managed to rent a vehicle, got to Champaign for my meetings and cancelled my flights to and from Champaign.