Transit agencies inch toward normalcy
Throughout Thursday the boards detailing arrival and departure information at O’Hare International Airport began showing more positive information associated with the flights rather than the dreaded canceled or delayed.
A resumption of regular schedules at both Chicago airports is expected today, despite more snow in the forecast, airline officials said.
Extra personnel who helped expedite check-in at the airport Thursday and savvy travelers who checked with the airlines before they showed up at the airport kept operations running smoothly, as a sense of normalcy returned to traveling in and out of Chicago following this week’s blizzard.
“We left super early expecting chaos,” said Terry Kibbe, who arrived at O’Hare at 8 a.m. for a noon flight to her home in Washington, D.C. “I’m just confused. It took us 20 minutes to get here from downtown. It was excellent. If this were Washington, we’d still be stuck at the hotel. The most amazing part of this whole thing was how well the city handled everything.”
Kibbe arrived in Chicago Monday and was leaving town on schedule. Chris Kyer was not so lucky. The Elgin man spent an extra night in Boston because of the blizzard that ransacked much of the nation Tuesday and Wednesday.
“It doesn’t look good there, either,” he said. “I’m just going to get home, watch some TV and maybe shovel the sidewalk.”
Jameela Khan was expecting business at her snack kiosk at O’Hare’s Terminal 1 to be a little more brisk as flights began coming and going.
“It’s very slow,” she said. “I expect that maybe it will be busy because of all the late flights.”
American Airlines canceled 500 flights in and out of O’Hare Thursday, mainly because operations at the airport were suspended all of Wednesday and the airline had few airplanes at O’Hare Thursday morning.
“If we don’t have the birds here, we can’t load them up and make them fly away,” said spokesman Ed Martelle.
More than 500 flights were canceled by United Airlines throughout the country with the majority occurring at the airline’s O’Hare hub, officials at the airline reported.
Chicago Aviation Department officials and airlines representatives urged anyone with plans to fly out of Chicago today to check their flight status through the airlines before heading to the airport.
Locally, Metra is running regular service operations. The only hiccup Thursday was about an hourlong interruption of service along the Burlington Northern/Santa Fe Line from downtown Chicago to Aurora. Hinsdale police said a 73-year-old Western Spring man’s car became disabled on the tracks and was struck by a freight train at about 3:30 p.m. The man exited the vehicle before it was struck. There were no injuries and the track was reopened at about 4:30 p.m. During that time, Metra limited service to traffic between downtown and Hinsdale only.
Metra officials said it was slow going early on Thursday as workers dealt with frozen switches and orders to slow down at graded crossings to make sure cars had extra time to get across the tracks. Those orders will remain in place for the time being, officials said.
Pace resumed regular operations Thursday morning after the agency suspended suburban bus service at 6 p.m. Wednesday. Agency officials said travel bans, impassable roads and staffing shortages made it difficult to operate.
Pace officials said buses ran “generally pretty close to schedule” throughout Thursday. Some buses were delayed due to the poor condition of some roads. Only city-run services in Niles and a Pace route near the Indiana border in the South suburbs experienced suspension of service. Officials at Pace expected those routes to resume regular service by Monday.