Passengers weather uncertainties at O'Hare
After more than 1,000 cancellations Monday, a degree of normalcy returned to O'Hare International Airport today.
But the hangover from snowstorms and freezing rain locally, along with turbulent weather across the nation, still plagued travelers with more than 290 cancellations and delays.
At Terminal 3, fliers clogged the line to get into security and waited anxiously at service counters for help. Passengers diligently checked monitors posting flights, or in worst-case scenarios, hunkered down to wait hours or even overnight.
Des Moines resident Rekha Krishnan's flight on American Airlines from Las Vegas to O'Hare was canceled Monday, but she and three other family members had managed to find another to Chicago this morning. The final part of their journey back to Des Moines was far from over, however. No flights to Des Moines were available with enough seats for all four, so they were preparing to camp out at the airport until Wednesday morning when a flight that can carry them all together will leave.
"We asked American Airlines for hotel accommodation, but they didn't provide it," Krishnan said.
Rose Schwietz and Caitlyn Drayna were bound from Minneapolis, where they live, to Istanbul on vacation, but ran into problems Monday when their connecting flight was canceled.
They showed up at Minneapolis St. Paul International Airport at the crack of dawn and waited two hours to be checked in manually. The first leg of their trip took them to O'Hare, where they revived themselves with coffee before a night flight to Turkey.
The weather-related delays were understandable Drayna said. "I don't want to fly in an airplane when conditions aren't great. (But) it's frustrating to stand in line for two hours and not get answers."
It was a different story, however, in Terminal 2. Lines were minimal and travelers like Rana Nizam and her two children were sailing through en route home to Utah after a holiday visit in Chicago.
The family had arrived at O'Hare two hours early. "We rushed to the airport ... we thought we'd be late," Nizam said. "But this is better than we thought."
More than 3.5 million travelers will pass through O'Hare between Dec. 19 and Jan. 5, the Chicago Department of Aviation predicts.
"To help impacted customers, we have issued a travel waiver so they can avoid any change fees when rescheduling travel," United spokeswoman Sarah Mack said.
To learn more, go to https://www.united.com/ual/en/us/ and click on "Important Notices."
At Midway, about 24 flights were canceled.