January 15, 2009 Flight delay

Right now we’re supposed to be on our flight to Heathrow. Obviously, that didn’t happen. J It was not our fault though- our flight to Chicago was delayed, and then we sat on the runway for 40 minutes because there wasn’t a gate for our plane to dock at. We weren’t worried though because the woman at the gate in Detroit told us that our flight was delayed until 10:35pm. Well it turns out she was wrong- the AA Heathrow flight was delayed, not the British Airways flight. Our flight left just as we got to the gate- they had already pushed back. It took us 15 minutes just to get there and we had to leave security to do it. We were told that an American gate agent could help us, but there were no counter agents and we couldn’t get to a gate. The AA flight was still delayed, still at the gate, and we couldn’t get to it without a boarding pass. We called AA, and they were very friendly, and tried to be helpful, but she couldn’t issue a boarding pass over the phone and without one we couldn’t get past security to get to this other flight. Very frustrating yes, and annoying, and aggravating. We couldn’t even get them to give us a hotel voucher because they can’t do that over the phone either. Apparently O Hare shuts down at 9pm, maybe earlier. Anyway here we are at the Hilton hotel at O Hare, which we were afraid we’d have to pay about $500 for, but which the guy at the desk told us was $200- we were like “Uh…well, maybe we should look around” and G asked if we could be reimbursed if the airline gave us a voucher the next day. At which point I felt like we entered 3^rd world negotiation stage, where he mysteriously wrote down another price (half of that almost) and showed it to us, and gave us that rate instead! So, although we weren’t planning on having to pay for a hotel, and heaven knows where our luggage is right now and if it’ll get to Heathrow in time for us to take it with us or if it’s been zapped into outerspace or something else, we have been abundantly blessed in not having to sleep on the floor in the airport (if we even could- the cleaners were already out cleaning the floors and there was nowhere for us to go). Our hotel room has soap, and towels, and is pretty nice really- it has a 40 inch plasma screen TV even. But best of all, it has a bed and a shower. J We’re hoping that they’ll put us on the 9am flight out to Heathrow, if not it’s British Airways at 9:30pm tomorrow night.