Travel rant

After almost 30 hours of travel, I am finally home. As I attempt to recover (and good news about Obama certainly help with this!) not only from the jetlag, but from the limitless ineptitude of the airlines and airports in this country, I wanted to share my experience with you fellow travelers out there so that you can make better travel choices and avoid the nightmare of a trip that I had to go through. The best way to avoid this is simple: Do not ever fly through O'Hare!

If you have any financial or time flexibility try to avoid flying through Chicago's O'Hare like the devil avoids the cross. This is probably one of the most inefficient airports in the world and when you add to this the fact that it is also one of the busiest (if not the busiest!) the end result is complete chaos. I landed at O'Hare with 1:45minutes to catch my flight to Louisville, but the combination of idiotic ticket sellers at United and the behavior of the TSA people made me miss my flight. Since I was flying out of Bosnia, the Bosnian ticket officials could only give me a boarding pass to Chicago, so once I landed at O'Hare I had to go to the United check in counter to get the boarding pass to Louisville. Well, it took about 30 minutes to get through passport and customs, but after a fairly smooth process, I ran into the stony and substanceless smile of a woman from the United who for about 15 minutes tried to explain to me that I would not make this flight. I told her that I had almost 50 minutes to go and if I went through security pretty quickly I could make it. She was confused as to why I would want to do that since there two more flights to Louisville that evening. I tried to explain (this time raising my voice) that after sitting in a small seat with no leg room for 10 hours I really wanted to get home as soon as possible and that if she could just go ahead and issue my boarding pass, I would make the flight. Well finally after having lost the precious 15 minutes, I ran to the train to get me to terminal 1 (I was at the international terminal 5). Which brings me to my next point: why in the world does United have its planes scattered through all the terminals? The immensity of the airport and the slowness of the train transporting passengers from one terminal to the other seems to be designed to slow people down so that you would have to stay longer at the airport and buy more things.

Anyway, after managing to get to terminal 1, I encountered another obstacle to getting home that night: the lovely and friendly TSA officials. The line at the security checkpoint dashed my hopes that I would make it onto that flight. I politely asked the stocky TSA woman if I could go ahead and cut the line since my flight is about to leave (and several people in the line said, "yeah go ahead") but she sternly warned me that "I would have to wait like everyone else." Suppressing my Eastern European ingrained urge to cut the line, I waited until it was finally my turn (some 30 minutes later). Once they looked at my boarding pass and entered my passport info into their black laptop, the TSA officials exchanged ominous glances and told me that I "had been selected for additional security clearance." Every time I fly to Bosnia or from Bosnia on a one-way ticket (I normally get better deals through "Student Universe" this way), I go through this additional screening. This time, however, it was much more "additional" than it had ever been. They literally took apart the insides of my shoes, and went through every individual item in the bags. They opened the laptop, turned it on, and then turned it off. I really have no problem going through this shit every time, but I was in a hurry and I tried to explain (very politely) this to the TSA people, which only seemed to make them even more determined. I think the fact that my country of origin is Bosnia and that I was sweating profusely (from all the running) did not help my case. After some 20 minutes later, I was finally told that I could go.

Well, this did not help as it took me another 15 minutes to run to my gate. The new tunnel addition at O'Hare, while beautiful, takes forever, so I naturally, missed my flight. Not to worry, the ticket official said, since there was another flight to Louisville at 6:58 but this one was full. I would be placed on standby and in case of not making it, I would be placed on the 9 o'clock flight and would eventually get there by midnight. If only it had worked that way!

Since O'Hare is insanely busy (and I had read that there had been serious management shuffles at the airport due to the mess), planes are almost always delayed due to the traffic jam at the tarmac or the idiotic overbooking of airlines which means that there is a lack of planes. This is apparently what happened in my case as they were desperately waiting for a plane from Iowa to land so that it could refuel and take us to Louisville. Well, the plane was delayed for two hours and by the time it finally got there, the skies over Chicago literally began to burst with lightening and all the southbound flights were soon grounded. By this time, I had not slept for almost 24 hours. As the rain quieted they boarded the plane and I fell asleep as soon as I hit the seat.

I woke up shortly afterwards thinking that we had landed, but then realizing we were still on the runway. The captain soon spoke: "I am sorry to inform you that all the southbound flights were canceled and we have to wait go get another route from traffic control, so we will turn off the engine to conserve fuel." The people grumbled. "Why did they fly us out in the first place if they knew the forecast?" the passenger behind me loudly asked the question that was on everyone's mind. The announcements from the captain kept coming, each informing us that we would be on our way soon, but the plane was still parked in the middle of the runway. Some 2 hours later, we were informed once again that we would be on our way soon but that the runway was so backed up and we were 9th in the line. By this time, the person behind me started losing it and would bang his fists against the seat. People started shouting at the pilot telling him "to take his time." Of course, this was not the poor man's fault, but what do you expect when you imprison 50 people in a small plane for 3 full hours! Yes, you read correctly: 3 hours! We boarded the plane around 9 and took off little after 12 am.

I was in Louisville, 2:30 local time and I am still sleepy.