O'Hare volunteers help stranded, distressed passengers
Whether it's one international traveler who's lost his luggage and doesn't speak English or the 1,700 passengers stranded at O'Hare International Airport by this week's East Coast snowstorm, Travelers Aid volunteers are on the case year-round.
Spanning ages from 19 to 80, and from a variety of professions, the blue-vested helpers of passengers in distress have been a constant presence at the airport since it opened in the 1950s.
The group is a member agency of a nationwide organization that began in 1851 in St. Louis, where it assisted people on wagon trains to the West.
Most of its work this week involved the thousands of passengers whose international or domestic flights were diverted or delayed by weather conditions along the East Coast.
The Chicago Department of Aviation provides materials like cots and blankets for stranded passengers in such situations, but for the most part it's the Travelers Aid volunteers who make sure they're distributed correctly and help make arrangements for off-site accommodations.
“The staff and volunteers of Travelers Aid are an integral part of our overall mission to provide the highest level of customer service and hospitality to millions of worldwide passengers who travel through O'Hare International Airport,” Chicago Department of Aviation Commissioner Rosemarie Andolino said.
Travelers Aid leaders say their volunteers have various motivations to help at the airport. Many, but not all, come from aviation backgrounds, while some have unique language skills that can be exercised nowhere better in the Chicago area than O'Hare.
O'Hare's volunteers collectively speak about 25 different languages, but also have access to translation phones that can help with about 140 languages, Travelers Aid Manager John Ishu said.
Most of the time, the group has one or two volunteers working information booths in each terminal and another walking the floor.
“Our volunteers are also very good at spotting people who need assistance,” Volunteer Coordinator Shawn Campbell said. “These are all things that we go through in our training process for volunteers.”
For the most part, the usual number of volunteers are adequate, even in cases like this week's large number of canceled flights. It only means each volunteer has less downtime between passengers or address whole groups at one time, Campbell said.
A rare example of when additional volunteers had to be called in occurred when O'Hare received a large number of Haitian evacuees from last January's devastating earthquake, Ishu said.
Though most of this week's weather issues are now resolved, the work of getting confused passengers onto their rebooked flights is likely to last until the weekend, Campbell said.