As you might have heard, a fire — apparently set by a disgruntled employee — at an Illinois air traffic control center early this morning has resulted in more than 1,300 flights being canceled in and out of Chicago’s O’Hare and Midway airports. If you want to get a sense of how badly this screwed up everyone’s day, this short video will do that for you.
The above clip, captures just those people waiting in the customer service line to rebook for one airline at one terminal at O’Hare this morning. It doesn’t include all the people trying to rebook travel over the phone or online, or who just gave up and went back home or to a hotel.
And things had to be even worse at Midway, where more than 70% of outbound flights were canceled today. Since Southwest uses Midway as a major hub, it canceled all flights in and out of that airport today, and had to cancel more than 400 flights nationwide as a result.
The Chicago Tribune reports that flights are slowly resuming, and at a reduced rate, but the FlightAware.com Misery Map is still decidedly red for the Windy City area right now:
by Chris Morran via Consumerist
No comments:
Post a Comment