Metro Hell

An article by Don Quixote    No Comments

It goes without saying that today was an interesting travel day.

While the weather in Washington was nice (and by nice I mean in the low 30s with no snow or other adverse weather conditions), Mother Nature decided to launch its full force on the Midwest. Sadly for us that included our arrival destination of Detroit, MI.

Things got really bad from the beginning. Our one hour flight took just a little over 3 hours; much of that time spent flying over the metro area waiting for clearance to land. Long flights in general make me stomach a little woozy, so traveling in circles for an extended period of time wasn’t really helping. The hard part is that I had the chance to upgrade to first class before we left, but I figured it would be a waste considering the flight was only and hour. That’s the last time I miss a chance to go big.

After several failed attempts to reach the ground (how our 15 minutes turned into 45 I’ll never know) we finally managed to make it down with a few moments to spare before our next flight (which was set to depart for Fort Wayne at 5:20).

As we had expected our flight home was delayed as well, but all was not lost as we were set to leave 15 minutes late. The down side to this was that we didn’t have enough time to grab a meal before we left as we didn’t want to risk missing our plane.

5:35 become 5:45 became 5:55.

A little after 6 they cancelled our flight.

It was our understanding that there was another flight (possible a 2nd) that would be leaving for Fort Wayne around 7:30 so we rushed to the reservation counter to see if we could get on. No such luck. According to the lady at NWA all future flights to Fort Wayne would be cancelled for the evening and the next flight out wouldn’t be until 1:34 pm the next day.

30 stinking minutes by plane and we would be home. 30 lousy, crappy, stupid minutes and we stuck in Detroit. We face another night shut up in a hotel (which was most likely full considering all the other flights that were cancelled) eating take out and missing the ones we loved most.

I called my sister Autumn (who’s a current Detroit native).

“Hey Autumn.”

“Hey Bob”.

“I hate your city.”

So never one to wait around, I decided I had to do something. I called 4 different car rental places. No luck. Some where out of cars, some didn’t have a drop off point in Fort Wayne. Luckily, I managed to snag a Ford Explorer from AVIS (granted the total cost with insurance and fuel was over $200). Autumn tried to talk me out of going, April did as well, but there was no way in hell I was going to get stuck in Detroit so close to home.

After averaging 40 miles an hour past Jackson, some low speed white knuckle driving, 4 accidents, 15 to 20 off road cars and 4 hours later we arrived at Fort Wayne Airport at 10:30 pm in the evening.

Well, what I really wanted to know was what happened with the rest of the flights. When we arrived, they still had two listed as possibly arriving that evening (both at 11:35 pm). This is their story.

The first flight NW2886 was supposed to leave at 7:30 and was delayed most of the evening. By 10:15 they had people boarding the plane. 11:03 it left the gate to depart. 11:15 they cancelled the flight and had to unload the plane.

The last flight, NW5824 was supposed to leave at 9:05 and was further delayed until 12:25 when it actually took off. It arrived at FWA at 1:40 am this morning.

So there you go.

The REAL kick in the pants, they had a flights leaving Detroit this morning at 9:00 am and 12:05 pm. Either way, I still think we made the right call. Now if only I can get my luggage back