Airport Fiasco

Katie and I flew out to Jodie's house in Indiana last week for a girls weekend. The plan was for Mom, Gina, and Jana to fly into Indianapolis Saturday early morning (1:00am). I was to meet them in the airport as my flight was scheduled to come in at 12:30am. Unfortunately, there was some mechanical problems with my plane and we ended up being 9 hours delayed. Yes, I was stuck in the John Wayne Airport for 9 hours with my 18 month old. Luckily she is pretty mellow because I really didn't bring anything to entertain her. We walked a while and she enjoyed standing up on the armrests of the chairs and then jumping off (over and over again). I'm glad I brought some lunch for her because all the airline offered us were those little cracker snack packs that you can buy on the plane. Pitiful. They did offer a travel voucher and told us that we would be put up in a hotel in Chicago before catching our connecting flight the next morning.

We were scheduled to leave at 1:23pm and finally taxied away from the gate at 9:30pm. Katie managed to sleep fitfully on the plane but I didn't get a wink of sleep. We arrived at 3:15am in Chicago and were told that the O'Hare Hilton (right on the premises) was not available to us since it was a holiday weekend. United was willing to give us hotel vouchers for a hotel 30 minutes away but wouldn't pay for the shuttle to get us there. Unfortunately, our flight from Chicago to Indianapolis was leaving at 7:30am so we only had 4 hours total to find Katie's carseat, get to a hotel, check-in, sleep for an hour, try and drag myself out of bed, get to the aiport in time to check-in, go through security, and make the flight on time. Fat chance. SO... Katie and I got to kill 4 hours of time during the most exhausting part of the night. She had already had a nap so she was wide-eyed and bushy tailed. I was just bushed.

I was disappointed that we weren't even offered meal vouchers since they weren't able to accomodate us in any way with the hotel. I will definitely be writing a letter to United Airlines. I'm not excited to use their travel voucher anytime soon.

(On a positive note: Our returning flights were ahead of schedule and we landed 30 minutes earlier than expected.)