O'Hare's busy day: Families reunite, couples propose

Two sons from two universities in two different states on two different flights converging at O'Hare International Airport on one of the busiest travel days of the year with heightened security.

You'd think the odds of a perfect pickup would be low, but beaming father Dan Hanebrink beat them, reuniting with his two college kids just as planned Wednesday. The rest was gravy for the St. Charles family.

Neither Kurt, a junior majoring in biochemistry at Skidmore College in New York, nor Brett, a freshman studying journalism at Ohio University, experienced long lines at checkpoints.

This despite U.S. Department of Homeland Security Secretary Jeh C. Johnson assuring Americans the agency was working overtime to monitor terrorism threats and asking the public to be vigilant.

"I'm going to sleep and play with our dog," said Kurt, already anticipating a hyper welcome from the family beagle.

But traveler Carolyn Kraemer, a transplanted suburbanite working in Washington, D.C., noticed TSA officers were particularly alert at Baltimore-Washington International Airport when she left early Wednesday.

"There was definitely heightened security," she said after hugging her mom, Christine Kraemer of Wilmette.

Christine Kraemer said her airport vigil waiting for Carolyn stirred memories of returning home to New Jersey from her own studies at Northwestern University on Thanksgivings past. This time, the roles were reversed.

"Fifty years later, I finally understand what (my parents) went through," she said.

More than 2 million travelers are expected to surge through O'Hare and Midway International Airports through Monday, the Chicago Department of Aviation predicted, a 6 percent spike from 2014. Of those, 1.5 million people will use O'Hare.

On the departures level, lines at checkpoints were long but moving.

"We do this trip every year," Batavia mom Krista Bartoszek said with her husband, Mike, and kids Alexa, 9, and Jacob, 7, en route to a family gathering in Philadelphia. The worst part so far was the long lines in the airport parking lot, she said.

While Bartoszek looked forward to having someone else do the cooking, Jacob and Alexa were eagerly anticipating fun with their cousins and "chocolate pie."

Meanwhile, Teng Chi and Yanjing Wang turned heads on the arrivals floor when Chi dropped to one knee, held out roses and a ring, then successfully proposed.

"I thought she'd say, 'Yes,'" a beaming Chi said.

The couple are grad students who met in Beijing and are studying chemistry, Chi at Purdue University and Wang at Washington University in St. Louis.

While multiple families were regrouping, Bettina Dornseifer of Mount Prospect was bidding goodbye to her husband while she and adult daughter Carina prepared to fly to Frankfort, Germany, to see her father.

The elder German is 85, and it's important to spend time with him because "you never know what's coming around the corner," Dornseifer said.

Travelers coming into O'Hare and Midway are experiencing an alternative to conventional cabs with the introduction this week of ride-sharing pickups at a designated location on the departures level between Terminals 1 and 2.

Although he's dropped off passengers before, Uber driver Henry Bardwell was looking forward to his first pickup at O'Hare.

"I'd drop off people at the airport, then drive back (empty) burning gas," he said.

Chicago anticipates its busiest day at Midway and O'Hare will be Sunday, and fliers are advised to give themselves plenty of time to clear security.