I had a scheduled flight yesterday from Orlando to Baltimore, followed by a change of planes, and then a second flight from Baltimore to Boston. The entire trip from end-to-end was scheduled to take about five hours. That should have been simple. I have done the same many times before.
Instead, I arrived at my final destination this evening, about 30 hours later than planned. Along the way, I spent a lot of time at the airport in Richmond, Virginia, a city I had not planned to visit. I also spent too many hours riding buses and trains, something I had not planned to do.
The problem was caused by fog in Baltimore. Visibility was so low that planes could not land most of the day on Monday. That's a problem as Baltimore is a major hub with hundreds of scheduled flights per day. My flight from Orlando to Baltimore was diverted to Richmond. We later attempted a second flight from Richmond to Baltimore, only to hit poor visibility again and we had to return to Richmond for a second time. After many hours sitting around waiting for the fog to lift, the airline gave up and chartered buses for the three-hour trip to Baltimore.
Picture this: dozens of flights get canceled at a major air hub during the busiest travel period of the year. Rescheduling the thousands of affected passengers to later flights wasn't always possible as most of the later flights were already fully booked and, in some cases, overbooked. There simply weren't enough seats available. I was offered a standby ticket on a flight 24 hours in the future. Some other passengers were told they might have to wait in Baltimore for 2 or 3 days for flights, assuming the weather improved.
I canceled my airline reservation and came home on Amtrak.
I usually enjoy traveling but have to admit the past two days have tested my patience.
Now, back to some interesting events of the past few days in the genealogy world...
