Either before I forget or before the memories of our flight home take over...
We left Louisville last Thursday, early. The flight was quick and on time to Chicago O'Hare. We were supposed to have a two hour layover, departing O'Hare at 9:41am.
I checked the departure board, and already saw that we were delayed until 10:57am, awaiting the incoming aircraft.
Then it jumped back to 10:44am. Then they realized that, although the plane had arrived from Jacksonville, it had a maintenance issue that needed to be fixed. Fine. Good. Obviously.
They pushed it to 11:00am, 11:15am, 11:30am, noon, and then 1:00pm. The updates from the man at the counter mentioned possible cancellation or changing aircraft, but nobody really knew what was going on. We finally heard that there was a problem with the air conditioning in Jacksonville, and that they'd fixed it there. But whatever they'd done had caused the AC in the cockpit to malfunction, and they ended up with no air flow somewhere between Jacksonville and Chicago. That was what they were trying to fix while we waited.
Suddenly at 12:05pm, they announced that we would begin boarding (so much for 1pm)!!
[All the while, I kept thinking Lewis had pooped, so I kept running to change him into a fresh diaper JUST IN CASE we were actually leaving.]
We finally boarded a little after noon, got on, took off, and then about 30 minutes in, the captain came on and said, "I hate to bring more bad news, but unfortunately we're not able to pressurize the cabin. Because of this, we can't get up to our cruising altitude of 30,000 feet, and we don't have enough fuel to stay at a lower altitude. So, unfortunately, we're heading back to Chicago." He also mentioned that he didn't know if it was related to the problems that had previously been repaired that day, but it wasn't safe to go on.
We'd already been doing that thing where your stomach drops a little/the plane seems like it can't get up where it needs to be, so that continued the 30 minutes back to Chicago (luckily there was a really nice lady next to me, and we joked/tried to laugh off the anxiety). We obviously made it back to the ground just fine.
Once we landed, they said there would be a United representative awaiting us at the counter to rebook us, etc. At this point, I considered just taking a one hour flight back to Louisville and trying again another time instead of the three hours to Boise. As we got to our gate, they said that they had actually lined up a replacement aircraft already that would arrive in 20 minutes, that they would turn it over in 10 minutes, and that we'd be taking off again with the same crew.
So, I ran and got us some lunch, changed Lewis AGAIN (thank goodness I packed extra diapers) and we went down to wait for our new plane. 30 minutes became at least an hour (I forget exactly) because a thunderstorm and heavy rain came through and they couldn't move our plane to the new gate. It finally let up enough, the plane arrived, and we finally did board, ONLY to have a second band of storms come through that shut down the ramp that backs the planes out from the gates, so we waited another 15-20 minutes for that to pass.
Finally, around 4:30pm, we took off for real, almost 7 hours later than we were supposed to. This flight was fine. No issues. Nice plane. Fine ride. Lewis only took about a 40 minute nap all day (from 5am onward until about 9:30pm Louisville time), but we made it. 6 1/2 hours later than planned, but we made it and we've had such a great time, and I'm so grateful for it.
And, unprovoked, when I checked my email that night, United had already sent an apology for our inconveniences with my choice of either 7000 miles, $150, or 20% off a ticket. We went with the $150, so that makes me not hate them (as much). :)
Here's hoping tomorrow goes more smoothly! We go through Denver this time, and I hear they have a children's play area, which will be great (Lewis ran back and forth on a broken people mover at O'Hare because that's all we had to work with). :)
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