<p>O’Hare; O’Hare; O’Hare.</p>
<p>My friend’s son who was stuck in London since last Saturday arrived home safely last night. 
Only 4 days late… at least he made it home for Christmas. And he’d had a hotel room and didn’t have to sleep on the floor at Heathrow.</p>
<p>
Well, I will. Kids and I were scheduled to connect at PHL on Sunday on USAir. Our flight from Philly to Detroit was canceled Christmas night at 11:20pm (flight was scheduled to leave PHL at 11:40am the next morning). So we rebooked for Tuesday morning even though flights were available for Monday; no confidence that all would be clear by then. And then we got the call tonight that tomorrow’s flight would also be canceled. Maybe they couldn’t clear the runways in Philadelphia (it was just 12 inches of fluffy snow and it’s been all of 24 hours since the snow stopped there); maybe the planes weren’t in position. All I know is that my one vacation back to visit the grandparents and cousins isn’t happening this year. And I’m spending my precious week off of work cooped up at home and thinking that I should be cooking, cleaning or opening those work files. Bah Humbug.</p>
<p>It isn’t a Philly issue,it is an east coast issue…sheez,it snowed up and down the east coast !a blizzard in NYC area…Knocking Philly is ridiculous for your missing your flight…</p>
<p>Philly airport is a PITA, but this one time, I won’t knock them. The winds are gusting over 40 miles per hour and personally I would NOT want to be taking off in a plane if that happened. We heard here that the biggest issue is the wind at this point.</p>
<p>That being said, we avoid the Philly airport whenever possible.</p>
<p>For once flying in/out of Philly has been the more reliable way to travel. S just spent 18 hours trying to get back to Washington via Amtrak. Service was halted for many hours yesterday because of a power failure west of NYC. Of course, none of this information showed up on their oniine status check. No one at 30th St station could provide any clue of when service would be restored. Many travelers were stranded. By late afternoon, all trains for today were sold out and so were most buses. S finally got on a Chinatown bus this morning that was running 2 hours late. Not sure when he’ll make it to work today.</p>
<p>At the rate this winter is going, this thread should be a sticky at the top of the forum:)</p>
<p>DD was scheduled to fly from JFK to LAX this morning at 7:00 AM on Delta. She tried to go online to reconfirm yesterday but the website was not responsive so she spent an hour on the phone. Rather than being able to reconfirm she was told that her flight was canceled. They had her cell and email but she had received no notice and would not have known if she hadn’t called. I would think that at the very least an automated email should have gone out.</p>
<p>D could have canceled but wanted to try to rebook. For obvious reasons there were no flights out of the NYC area or Philadelphia but Delta did have space on a flight out of Reagan with two stops before getting to LA. Things were looking up when she got through again late last night and was able to book to LA out of Reagan with only a stop in Cincinnati. </p>
<p>The original trip to LA was very reasonable but add on $200 for the only train tickets still available from NYC to DC (the Acela) and it is no longer a bargain trip. I am still amazed that an airline that had contact information (and has no problem sending spam via said contact info) didn’t call or computer generate something. She made it to Reagan and has her boarding pass. If the plane is close to on time she should be able to pull this off. It will be shame if she only makes it as far as Cincinnati.</p>
<p>The 12/26 Blizzard Stand-up Guy Award goes to my BIL in the Atlanta suburbs. My nephew is fairly new at his first job out of undergrad and really felt the need to get back to work in New York. His return flight from Atlanta was canceled. Last night his rebooked flight was canceled as well (he at least got a phone call!). My ever upbeat BIL and nephew piled into the car late last night and drove straight through to Union Station in DC where my nephew got on a train back to NYC. BIL turned around and headed back to Atlanta. Remarkable.</p>
<p>A plus for Phila airport. Yesterday morning my kids flew out of Phila to Las Vegas on a very large airplane. The airplane was in Phila already( huge plus) and was apparently large enough to handle the wind (hmmmmm…not very confident of this though). Anyway they did manage to get out.</p>