Christmas Day was spent with my iPad as I watched my family in Ohio open presents and get ready for Christmas dinner. At first glance, that probably sounds pretty sad but it's much better than the alternative of sitting at home alone without any interaction at all. To be completely honest, it felt as if I were there except I had no presents to open and I didn't get the eat my family's delicious Christmas Dinner. It was a Chinese buffet for me!
My friend Shane was getting married in Grand Rapids, Michigan on the following Saturday so I headed up to take part in the festivities. Richard, my friend who I talked extensively about in a previous blog (What is Fair?), his wife and their relatively newborn son, my Godson, also made the trip to Grand Rapids. The last time I'd seen him was as he was sitting in the NICU after being born 6 weeks early.
It was an incredible three days in the bitter cold of Western Michigan and such a beautiful wedding...not mention a beautiful bride! Unfortunately, the fun ended all too soon as the Caitlyn and Shane headed off to Hawaii. I had to catch the early morning flight back to St Louis the following day.
The 31st, though, was a different story. Just as soon as the sun was beginning to rise over the Gateway City, my phone rang. "Chris, we have a trip for you." This wasn't a surprise. It was almost expected that I would be working New Years Eve. "You're going to be overnighting in Harrisburg with an 11 am show the following morning. You should be back in St Louis by 4 pm the next day."
I copied down my flight information but knew this wasn't going to be as simple as a single overnight. I still had 5 days remaining on-call. Just as I usually do when I'm getting ready, I turned on The Weather Channel to see what the next two days would be bringing me as I was ringing in the new year in eastern Pennsylvania.
When I finished shaving, I turned off the water and immediately heard ominous music coming from my television. This was the Weather Channel, right? The only times they play horror movie music is when hurricanes are bearing...I stopped my thought there and walked to my living room. I arrived in time for them to tease a winter storm that would be setting its aim at the Plains in the next few days. Its expected arrival in the Midwest was on the 4th--my final day of reserve. I still have 5 days on-call, I thought to myself again. This was going to get interesting.
Just as I expected, the following three days included much more flying. When I awoke in Dayton, Ohio on the 3rd, things had started to deteriorate in the Central part of the country and the Weather Channel was spouting doom and gloom. "We expect as much as 14 inches of snow in places like St Louis and Chicago over the next two days with record breaking temperatures to follow," one anchor warned. As a meteorologist, I'm always a little skeptical of the all-mighty Weather Channel. They are paid by how many people watch and what better way to get more viewers than to warn that the end is near?
On the 3rd, they routed me back to St Louis for a short 10-hour overnight. As I got off the plane, I overheard people in the gate area talking about the grocery stores in St Louis and how bread and milk were almost completely sold out. They went to several different stores, the people said, and none had any. Many here were clearly taking this storm seriously. On the drive home, digital displays over the highway were warning of a winter storm. The last thing I wanted to do after 6 days on the road was get stuck.
I had been assigned a one day trip in the morning scheduled to arrive back in St Louis well after the storm was supposed to start. Massive delays were imminent and with the implementation of new FAA imposed rest rules the same day, I knew the 4th was going to get ugly. I checked my schedule one last time before bed. It was going to be a deadhead leg (ride in the back) to Chicago. Then I was going to fly from Chicago to St Louis to Dulles and then deadhead back to St Louis at 9:00pm. What does this mean? With the storm set to be draped over Cleveland, Chicago, and down into northern Texas, I was going to spend the entire day in the snow.
January 4th
It was already a brutal winter with so many people stranded following the storms before Christmas and they knew it wasn't going to get any better over the next few days. The sun was still peeking through the clouds but the day's early snow flurries showed that the storm, not scheduled to arrive until tonight, was going to be a snowy one.
When we arrived in Chicago, I went to a food court to try and kill some of the two hours I had to wait until my flight was scheduled to depart. The sad stories I overheard of people sleeping in airports and missing Christmas confirmed how bad this winter has been for traveling. These people were returning home after the holidays and some were unknowingly going to get a second dose of winter.
When I arrived at my gate, the scheduled departure time was starting to creep further into the future. When I left the food court, it was showing on time but by the time I arrived at the gate, it had moved to a 30 minute delay. Over the next hour the time kept getting pushed back in increments of 10 but after an hour, the updates stopping coming. I stood there and watched as people anxiously checked their watches and grumbled to themselves. Here I was, the enemy, a company man. I was part of the problem. "Are you waiting for a flight too? I bet we don't even have pilots when the plane arrives." One woman snarked at me. I informed her that I was one of the pilots for that flight and her tone immediately changed. "Oh, you're a pilot? For this flight? Well,that's good!" Of course I'm a pilot. Why else would I be wearing this uniform?
After an hour and a half, the airplane we were supposed to be on was still sitting in Michigan. That's not good. It should've left long ago if we are going to get out at the new departure time. After one last refresh of the browser, the red CANCELED popped up.
I immediately called scheduling. They were deadheading me back to St Louis on a later flight so I could still work DC flight. When I checked the departure board to find my new gate, more and more flights were getting canceled. In fact, the three remaining flights to St Louis, only one remained. Luckily, because I needed to get back to fly, I was booked as a 'Must-Ride,' meaning that paying passengers are bumped so that I get a seat. No one else knew that as a horde of people from the canceled flights rushed to the next gate to beg to list as standby or get rebooked.
When we (the horde and I) arrived at the gate, there was already a line. One girl started crying. "What am I going to do?" she weeped to herself in the middle of the terminal. I stood there in silence watching the drama unfold. There was nothing I could do for these people even though everything inside me wanted to.
"You don't understand," one man pleaded with the agent, "I NEED to get to St Louis." He apparently thought he was the only man in the airport needing to be somewhere and was unaware that there were now 150 people at the gate needing to be in St Louis but only 64 seats. At that moment, an airplane pulled up to the gate, a regional jet like the one we were supposed to be on. People started cheering, most blissfully unaware that our airplane hadn't even departed Minnesota yet. I looked out the window and it was indeed the wrong airplane. It was also then that I realized how much snow was falling. There was already an inch on the ground and it was falling so heavily that you could barely see the terminal on the other side of the ramp. Another pilot and I attempted to try and explain to some of them that this wasn't our airplane but they refused to listen.
The Captain of the misidentified airplane, one from my company, walked through the gate door and up to me. "We're repositioning this airplane (meaning it was flying empty) to Dulles. Do you need a ride?" I wanted to say yes but was still waiting for the last flight to St Louis. "Okay, well if anything changes, we shouldn't be leaving for another 30 minutes."
Several minutes after the Captain disappeared down the jetway, one Army Private in uniform stood up and started swearing. "You've got to be FUCKING KIDDING ME! It's canceled! Now what!" I should have been surprised by his audacious display of anger but it wasn't the first time I'd seen someone in uniform have an outburst in an airport. He was right about one thing though; the flight was canceled. I called scheduling again to see what they wanted to do with me. This time, the phone just kept ringing. I tried back several times before anyone answered.
Back at headquarters, things were starting to deteriorate. When I finally was connected, I asked the scheduler what they wanted to do with me now. She sounded flustered separating most of her words with "uh" and "um." In the background, I heard someone speaking loudly. "Give me a second. I'll call you back. We just got word that the city is shutting down operations in Chicago tonight for three days."
Holy shit...they're doing what? I stood there, mouth open. Shutting down a major international airport like Chicago, a hub for two of the world's largest airlines, United and American, meant that things were going to be worse than expected. "Wait!" I blurted as panic started to creep in, "There is a repo flight at the gate in front of me, tail number 835, going to Dulles. I can catch the last flight out of there tonight if I have to. I don't care, I just want out of Chicago." She agreed and sent me catch the flight. I left the burgeoning chaos of the airport and met the Captain in the flight deck. Just as I was walking back to have a seat, the phone rang again.
"Chris, you need to get off the airplane. We are missing two First Officers and might need you to work a flight out of Chicago tonight." My stomach sank. The word "might" had me concerned. If they find them, I'll be stuck here. If it takes too long, I might not even have a hotel room for the next 3 days. I walked back up to the Captain and asked when they would be leaving. He told me that as soon as they could shut the door, they were getting out of there. I grabbed my suitcase and sulked off the airplane. The last thing I wanted to do right now was face the angry mass of humanity in Chicago.
All I could do at this point was wait. The longer I waited, though, the worse things were going to get. I heard more people yelling behind me. One group of passengers had just walked up from below the terminal. Apparently, they were taxiing to the runway and had to return when one of pilots "timed out." He'd reached the end of his duty day and it was now illegal for him to continue. Unfortunately for them, there were no longer any gates and they had to be bussed back from a remote parking pad.
The angry mob was being lead by a young Navy Officer dressed in his khaki uniform and black pea coat. He stood there and pointed his finger at the "A-team" customer service agent and demanded they bring their bags to them immediately. "Send someone down here right now to get our stuff. We are not moving from here until you do!" He turned on his cell phone camera to record the man's response. As he did, another man in the mob started demanding they send someone down to the gate to rebook them.
"I'm sorry sir, you're going to have to go down to the customer service counter like everyone else for your rebooking," the surprisingly calm man said. He wasn't just any normal agent. He was wearing a suit and an earpiece. It appeared like he was the corporate version of crowd control. Another woman became hysterical and started screaming at the man. Others chimed in and demanded they go first in the line. This wasn't weather, they said, this was YOUR fault! "Ma'am, two international flights were just cancelled. Why do you think you're more important than every single one of them?"
The crowd had become irrational and continued to blame the suited man for all the problems. It was then that I heard someone in the back say something about 5 hours. "Yes, right now the wait is 5 hours. We've called in as many people as we can find but the weather is preventing many from arriving. Others have called in sick. We are doing the best we can." The agent looked at the man taping him and said, "Oh, and thanks for recording me man." The officer yelled back a trite you're welcome and it was then that the agent saw he was uniformed military. He hesitated a moment before thanking him politely for his service. I wouldn't have.
The wait is 5 hours?... I need out of here!
My phone rang. "We have you on a reposition flight back to St Louis. I've called the crew and they are waiting for you at gate B19. The Captain wants to know how soon you can be there." Minutes! I jumped up and yanked the charger out of the wall. Hastily, I stuffed it in my bag and briskly left the gate area touching each one of my pockets to ensure I had everything. As I made my way to the other end of the terminal, I weaved in and out of groups of people yelling at their cellphones. One woman swore at me as I walked by; others in her group did their best to calm her down. People were laying on the ground using clothes out of their carry-on bags as blankets and pillows. The bars were full of angry, drunk passengers.
It wasn't long before I walked up to an empty gate where my plane was sitting. When I walked through the main cabin door, I saw 6 other crew members sitting in the back. They were escaping the chaos as well.
I sat down and buckled my seatbelt. The pilot next to me spoke up. "I just got off the phone with a friend of mine in the aircraft next to us. They are repositioning the plane to DC. He said there are 30 crew members on that plane. Looks like they are getting as many crews and planes out while they still can." Airplanes don't make money frozen to the ground in Chicago (something that actually happened when operations started again days later) so the companies were spending a lot of money to move aircraft to areas where they could fly.
As the airplane was backing away from the terminal, I couldn't help but think of the anarchy I was leaving. Many of the people, including airline employees, didn't know the airport was shutting down for 3 days. Worse yet, it was late enough in the evening that most wouldn't get hotel rooms. The stranded passengers would be without homes for days, trapped away from their families and jobs. I understood their frustration and while I felt sadness for them, I was glad I was escaping. I felt like one of the lucky survivors of the zombie apocalypse. The cabin of our plane was quiet, the first I'd heard in almost 6 hours. As the engines roared to life, I leaned against the window and slept.
****
It was one of the worst storms of the last 25 years. Many people I talked to were looking back to 1983, the year I was born, to find anything similar. Chicago, true to their word, shut the airport down but they weren't the only ones. Cleveland, New York, Boston, and Detroit stopped or severely limited service. The morning after, over 4000 flights across the country were canceled. Luckily for me, I was sitting at home watching it all on the news. More than a foot of snow fell on St Louis forcing the city to shut down for the next two days. The only businesses open were gas stations and the occasional mostly empty grocery store.
Two days later, I flew one of the first waves of United Express flights back into Chicago. When I walked into the terminal I was so happy to leave 3 nights ago, I glanced at the Departures board. More than half of the flights were still being canceled. Here is a picture of the Departures board when I arrived early in the morning:
The storm had left airplanes and crews stranded and out of place. At our airline alone, pilots were trapped in Cleveland, Roanoke, and Rochester for 2 days. The weather was holding them and their airplanes hostage. An email was sent out to our pilot group begging for volunteers to fly but with the new rest rules imposed by the FAA, many could not. I flew for the next 4 days straight picking up the slack from timed-out or out of place crews but it wasn't enough. As late as the 9th, 5 days after the storm, flights were still being cancelled. It wasn't until the 11th, an entire week after the storm hit, were operations back to normal. Even then, flights were still completely full as passengers rebooked during the chaos were just now getting home. As I look back, part of me knows that no one handled the Great New Year's Storm of 2014 well, but considering the circumstances, I don't think any of us could have handled it better.
No comments:
Post a Comment