As I sit down to write this, I’m stuck at O’Hare Airport in Chicago pondering life’s little inconveniences. Welcome to week 13 of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a sustainable living tip for the week. This week, I have a tale of airport adventures to share!  Plus, promising innovations on the plastic front, and airline sustainability.

The Sunday Spark – Week 13

On my mind this week: Airport adventures

Sometimes in life, you have to accept things are out of your control and roll with life’s little inconveniences.

It’s Friday night and I’m stuck at O’Hare Airport in Chicago. My 6:30 flight is now scheduled to depart at 10:30. There’s a severe thunderstorm raging outside, and many flights have already been cancelled. So far, mine is just delayed but that could change.

I just popped over to the United Airlines desk and there is a huge lineup of people trying to rebook cancelled flights. Thankfully, people in the line mostly seemed pretty calm. I always feel bad for airline employees in these situations. They’re short staffed and overworked, and the weather this winter has been uncooperative making their already stressful jobs even more-so.

So, while it’s frustrating to be stuck in an airport, and I’d really like to be on my way to Toronto right now to start my weekend, I’m taking advantage of the time to write my Sunday blog post and counting my blessings. I’m safe and dry indoors, I have a colleague here to keep me company as we await our flight, and we’re enjoying a bag of Garrett’s Chicago Mix popcorn.

Things could be worse.

Airport adventures – Part 2 – Severe weather and sheltering in place

I finally arrived home at 4 o’clock Saturday morning so I’m more than a little tired today. After I wrote the first part of this post, things got really interesting!

My friend and I got tired of sitting so we decided to go for a walk and explore the airport. I’ve flown in and out of O’Hare many times over the years, but I had no idea how huge it was. We walked for about an hour and I got over 5,000 steps in!

While we were walking, we got a few emergency alerts on our phones about severe thunderstorms in the area. We weren’t too worried as we’d already weathered one severe thunderstorm since arriving at O’Hare. So, what’s another one, right? Wrong!

Shortly after sitting down at the gate, there was an announcement about severe weather heading toward the airport and asking us to shelter in place and stay away from windows. We heard the announcement the first time and looked at each other a little puzzled and unsure what to do. When they repeated it a second time, airport security started herding people toward the escalators into the underground tunnels that connect the concourses.

I spent the next hour underground with about 10,000 other dazed travellers until the severe weather passed. It was a surreal experience. Something that surprised me, though, was how people were generally calm overall and just taking it in stride.

I took this video and photos of the scene to give you a sense of the experience:

Airport adventures – Part 3 – Not quite ready for takeoff

After this second wave of severe weather, we weren’t hopeful about getting back to Toronto Friday night. We found our gate and decided to wait it out.

Around 10:00, an airline employee announced the incoming flight would be landing in about 20 minutes so we would be on our way just before 11. Hope returned!

The incoming flight landed, and the cleaning crew did their job. We watched the crew board and felt confident we’d be boarding soon. But the evil travel fairies weren’t done with us quite yet. The gate agent announced they were missing one of the flight attendants and we couldn’t board until they were all on board.

I’ve often said I can’t imagine how difficult it must be for airlines to deal with these kinds of situations. They’d had to cobble together a crew from other cancelled flights and the “missing” flight attendant was coming from another flight to work ours, hence the delay.

The missing flight attendant finally arrived at the gate around 11:00. She got such a huge ovation from the weary passengers; you would have thought she had won an Olympic gold medal. After rewarding us with a pirouette and a bow, she boarded the plane. Boarding commenced!

Airport adventures – Part 4 – White-knuckle flying

I was doing the math in my head and figured we’d be back in Toronto just before 2 a.m. Eastern Time, but my airport adventures weren’t over just yet.

We boarded the plane, and everyone was in their seats when they made a couple of announcements.

First, a passenger hadn’t made the flight but their bag was on the plane, so we had to wait while the ground crew combed through the cargo hold to locate the bag and remove it from the plane. Sigh…another delay.

But even worse, they announced that, since our flight path basically followed the path of the storm, the flight attendants would be seated and buckled up the entire flight because we were expecting severe turbulence. YIKES! I have taken hundreds of flights in my life and had never experienced that before. I’m not an anxious flyer but that made me more than a little nervous.

We finally pushed back from the gate around midnight. As warned, it was a vey turbulent flight and we touched down in Toronto just before 3 a.m. I have never been so grateful to see land. Kudos to the crew and staff at United Airlines for getting us home safely.

After a rainy drive home, I finally crawled into bed just after 4 a.m. Grateful to be home and safe and with a travel story to top all travel stories.

P.S. To the individual seated in seat 36A. I applaud your snoring capabilities. If there was a snoring Olympics, you would be the champion. It’s seriously impressive that you can snore louder than the sound of jet engines. Gold medal to you sir!

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• On Sunday afternoon, we attended a gathering with my husband’s cousins. We don’t see them very often, so it was nice to get-together with them.
• Despite my airport adventures on Friday, I did have a smooth flight to Chicago on Thursday—the first on-time arrival since before the pandemic.  
• We had productive and engaging committee meetings in the Milwaukee area. It’s always fabulous to gather with my benefits industry colleagues and friends.

What I learned this week

This week, my airport adventures taught me you have to just roll with life’s little inconveniences. The string of tornadoes that ripped through the mid-west on Friday killed at least 8 people. I’m grateful to have arrived home safely and recognize things could have been a lot worse.

All this adventure and excitement derailed my learning this week, but I do have one exciting innovation to share with you. Thanks to my blogging pal at Unwanted Life for passing this information on to me.

Promising innovation on the plastic front

In addition to the waste it creates that will stay on our planet for eternity, the other problem with plastic is that it’s made from crude oil—adding to our climate change problem.

This week, I heard some promising news out of Boise State University in the United States. Two researchers there have developed a new kind of recyclable plastic that isn’t made from crude oil. That’s cause for celebration. (Source: Science Alert)

Sustainable living tip: research your airline’s sustainability record

Thanks to my airport adventures, I had to pick an air travel related sustainable living tip.

After I boarded my flight Friday night, I saw an ad on the screen for the work United Airlines is doing related to sustainability. While we may be a few years away from sustainable fuel, electric planes, and other Earth-friendly solutions, it made me think about the airline industry’s contribution to climate change and what the future may look like.

When booking a flight, it pays to research your airline’s track record. Check out Atmosfair’s website for their most recent 2018 airline index. While we still have a long way to go, it turns out United Airlines is the highest ranked American airline in the short- and medium-haul flight category, although their overall rating is a D. Air Canada is the second-highest ranked airline in the world in the long-haul category and has an overall rating of C. It’s worth noting that no airline has an A ranking, and only 2 have a B ranking. Check out the website for more information. It’s an interesting read.

(See Green travel tips to reduce your carbon footprint for more ways to cut your impact.)

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I’d love to hear your thoughts on any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.