How I Managed to Fly Home Despite a Crippling Snow Storm

Dec. 31, 2010

It’s a frigid day here in Tucson, Arizona. It is overcast, with a drizzling rain and temperature hovering at 42⁰ F (5.5⁰ C). However, I don’t care as I have the week off and am sitting comfortably in our living room with my coffee and newspaper.

Chika, our chihuahua, is on the couch in the corner - ensconced in her bed inside the fabric hutch my wife gave her for Christmas and giving no indication that she wants to leave the warmth of her bed to venture out.

Predictions are that we will get snow later this evening, possibly as much as the half inch that nearly crippled Tucson three years ago.

Meanwhile, the news is filled with stories of the thousands of travelers in the northeastern and other parts of the United States who are sitting stranded in airports thanks to heavy snowstorms that have dumped feet, rather than fractions of an inch, of snow on the area.

Looking at the news reports on TV and the Internet I was reminded of the last time I was stranded by a snowstorm while visiting family in Rochester, New York over Christmas.  

It was probably in 1996 or 1997 and everything was fine, weather wise, until a few days before I was to leave when the news began reporting a snowstorm moving across the upper mid-west toward Chicago.

The airport was mobbed, but I checked my luggage and was directed to the gate for the next flight to Chicago and a connection to Phoenix.  As is frequently the case, flying in and out of nearby Phoenix is often both less expensive and more convenient than  flying from Tucson.  

Since my flight the day before had been canceled and my new reservation was for two weeks hence, I had to get in the, already over crowded, stand-by line.  

When boarding began, most of those with tickets for that flight got up and that immediately gave me a good idea as to what portion of the seats would be left for standby.  Glancing at those waiting in the stand-by line with I quickly concluded that there were more people ahead of me than I assumed were seats available so I left to search for another flight.

Chicago got hit a couple days before I was to leave and O’Hare Airport  was closed for the better part of two days.  

A somewhat weakened version of the storm hit Rochester the day I was to leave.  The snow caused some landings and takeoffs to be delayed but the real problem was few arrivals due to so many planes being stranded in Chicago or other cities where they had been re-routed to because of problems in Chicago.  

Things got worse in the afternoon and most flights, including mine, were finally canceled, so I collected my luggage and called my sister to take me back to my Mother’s where I was staying.  My Mother, of course, was very happy with this and was even happier when I called the airline and was told that the earliest they could guaranty a new flight was in two weeks.

As a precaution, I booked a seat on the first flight available two weeks hence and began making plans to try to leave the next day.  I got a couple of good books and put them in my carry-on along with my toothbrush, razor and some snacks  and called my sister to take me to the airport the next morning.

My plan for the day was simple.  With numerous flights canceled due to major airport closings and numerous others missed due to re-routing and cancellations of flights into hub airports, like O’Hare, I knew that a lot of people had not arrived in cities for connecting flights or would have called and changed reservations early when it appeared that the coming storm would cause their flight the next day or so to be canceled.  

This meant that, after an initial rush, planes would begin having empty seats as a result of the passengers being stranded elsewhere.  Also, the storm only affected a highly populated band of cities from Chicago eastward.  The weather in the rest of the nation was fine.  The problem for the rest of the nation was that most of their traveling population was stranded across the Northeast.

My goal became getting a flight south, even to New York City or Philadelphia which had not been closed by weather and could easily handle any traffic that made it in.  I had food and drink in my shoulder bag along with a couple books so I just went from line to line and stood patiently waiting and reading until an attendant announced that there were no more seats at which time I quickly  found a new line to wait in.

I knew that a big part of the problem was the fact that the storm had not only grounded a number of planes in places like Chicago which meant that not only were the planes and and their passengers stranded at the snowed in airports but, since the planes couldn’t continue on that day, their flights from the next cities on their routes were also canceled stranding more people down the line.  

However, people stranded in one city with connecting flights in cities down the line would be missing these flights thereby opening seats.  Of course many of the planes for these connecting flights were themselves stranded which added to the chaos even in parts of the nation not hit by the storm.  Then there were people either at home who were scheduled to fly out when the storm hit or people, like me, who were at a destination and had a flight scheduled to return home.

These people had a choice of calling the airline and either rescheduling their flight if it either had been canceled or looked as if it would be canceled or going to the airport and risking either having the flight canceled before leaving or risk being stranded part way if a connecting flight was cancelled.  Of course those who hadn’t started their trip could simply ask for a refund on their ticket when the flight was cancelled or about to be cancelled.

Other factors came into play as well.  If the airport a person was departing from was a long way away some people would choose stay put rather than risk spending a couple of nights or more at the airport.  Others who didn’t have an urgent need to make the trip, if they planned to travel with babies or toddlers, if they were in ill health or disabled or were simply risk averse would probably choose to reschedule for a later flight.  

In my case I was about a 15 minute drive from my Mother’s home and could easily return there if my plan didn’t work.  I also had a job to get back to and didn’t mind a bit of adventure.

I knew that In a situation like this the marginal cost of using otherwise empty seats to move stranded passengers out of airports is near zero while paying overtime and calling in extra staff to take care of stranded customers on the ground is very expensive.  

In addition to figuring that some seats might become available on planes leaving Rochester, I was fairly certain that once I got south of the snow belt there would not only likely be more empty seats available from people with connections but still stranded in the snow belt but that east - west flights in the southern part of the nation would probably be running on schedule but with fewer passengers.

My theory proved correct and luck was with me as I found a plane flying south to Baltimore with empty seats.

I had arrived at the airport at about 7 that morning and at eleven thirty I caught a US Airways flight to Baltimore which ended up departing with about one third of its seats empty.  

Of those of us that got on, about a quarter of us were standby with most of the standbys having missed flights to Washington, Virginia or the Carolina's - routes that normally don’t connect through Chicago (although most were stranded because the plane they should have taken had been stranded in Chicago or elsewhere causing their departing flight from Rochester to be canceled).  

Baltimore was sunny and fair with the airport busier than usual due to the combination of holiday traffic and problems in the rest of the system but not the chaos that I had left behind in Rochester.

Upon landing I checked at the US Airways desk for another flight but the agent at the desk didn’t have anything with seats available until the next day and, according to his computer, neither did any other airlines leaving Baltimore that day.

However, he asked me to sand aside for a moment, and shortly another attendant came to the desk with two other passengers in tow and told me that there were flights available for us from Reagan Airport in nearby Washington, D.C.

I was ready to pay for a ground shuttle to Reagan Airport, but US Airways arranged and paid for a taxi cab to take us there. The attendant even apologized to us because there would be a 20 minute wait for the taxi.

Here I was flying on US Airways with an American Airlines ticket and not only was US Airways honoring my ticket but also giving me extra service along with an apology for my having to wait a few minutes for the free extra service - what more could one want!

At Reagan Airport, the two other passengers were quickly confirmed on other flights and departed within an hour and a half. For me, the agent found a flight to Houston departing in a couple of hours with a connection to Phoenix the next morning.

However, apparently curious about my crazy route to date, looked up at me and asked me where I was trying to get to. I told him that I lived in Tucson but had booked my trip through Phoenix because it had been less expensive.

He then said that, if I wanted to wait until later that evening, he could put me on a flight to Dallas, Texas with a connection to Tucson that would get me to Tucson around 1:00 a.m. I quickly said yes to that and he even put something in the computer that got my luggage, wherever it was, re-routed to Tucson.

I made it home that night and the next day the airline called and arranged to deliver my luggage to my home that night.

Of course the day spent flying was the day I should have been back to work.  I had called my supervisor’s office the night my original flight had been canceled and left a message on her answering machine saying that my flight had been canceled and that I would be a day or so late in returning to work.

She was surprised when I showed up only a day after I was supposed to and was somewhat impressed by my story.  

What really impressed her was her encounter the next day at a Chamber of Commerce breakfast meeting with other business people.  She later told me that about  a half a dozen of those at the table were talking about the storms up north and how they had been called by their employees stranded in the Northeast and told by the stranded employees that it would be at least two weeks before they could get home and return to work.

She came back to the office extremely impressed with me.