Made it .... just barely.

I think I've recovered enough from my travels to be able to write up this post...mostly for my own memory, partially for your entertainment. I knew that traveling to Toronto from Seattle would be a bit risky and could possibly be a complete nightmare but I figured that if we could get out of Seattle and our flight wasn't canceled then I was willing to take the risk. Here goes...

Dec 24th :
Wednesday morning, hmma and i woke up early and headed to the airport at 3am. As we were approaching, snow began to fall. This is generally a bad sign in Seattle. The flight was scheduled to leave at 6:15am so I was hopeful that we might still be able to go. At around the expected boarding time, it was announced that our flight would be delayed (oh oh...) but only by an hour - apparently the flight schedules in Chicago O'Hare where we were stopping over was behind schedule. But we ended up flying just after 7am and I thought, well that wasn't too bad.

We landed safely in O'Hare at 1pm and as soon as our phones were able to be used, hmma used his iPhone to check the status of our connecting flight. It was delayed by 30 min to 2pm. We would have time to catch our connecting flight AND catch our bus at 5:30pm in Buffalo to Toronto!! When we landed though, and checked the status of our connecting flight on the monitors, we saw that the flight was further delayed to 3pm. We would miss our bus. Hmma got on the phone with an American Airline agent and complained that the delayed flight would cause us to miss our travel reservations in BUF to YYZ. So the AA agent said they would transfer our reservation from ORD straight to YYZ therefore bypassing BUF. That was a relief. I really didn't want to take a 3 hr bus ride from BUF to YYZ. Our flight to YYZ was scheduled to depart at 530pm so this gave us some time to eat lunch at the airport. that wasn't so bad. With a scheduled departure at 530pm, we'd land in YYZ at around 830pm. That was actually earlier than our original arrival through BUF. Excellent! 5pm rolled around and we were told that our flight was going to be delayed. Another hour passes by and we are told that our flight will be further delayed - apparently the captain of the crew is on another flight arriving at ORD and that flight is late coming in. The captain is scheduled to arrive just after 7pm. At 8pm, they tell us that the captain has landed and is now taxiing. It should be just another 30 minutes or so for the captain to arrive at our gate. At 9pm, the captain arrives and we board the plane. As we are walking along the jet bridge to get onto the plane, i notice that the air is really quite cold. When we are all seated on the plane, I fall asleep thinking that even with the delays, this wasn't all THAT bad. I wake up about 45 min later and realize that we're still sitting on the ground. The captain provides an update that they have finished loading baggage but is waiting for fuel. He says that the delay in the flight is actually to our advantage because of high winds in Toronto that would prevent our flight from landing. The winds have died down shortly however so we are now good to go. After refueling, the captain tells us that we have to wait to de-ice the plane. After de-icing, it looks like we're ready to go. By this time it is approximately 1030pm. The captain makes an attempt to back out of the gate but it feels like a jolt. This can't be good. A few more jolts later and then another 30 minutes passes before the captain comes back on to announce that the plane is literally frozen to the ground - more de-icing is required to see if the ice can be melted away. after more de-icing and more attempts to move the plane, the captain comes back on around 11:30pm to tell us that unfortunately, the brakes are frozen and the plane is unable to move. The only way to fix this is to lift the plane and they cannot do it when it is loaded with passengers... and of course, the worst news arrives, the flight is delayed to next morning. We all pile out of the plane and wait for an attendant to tell us what will be done about the situation : vouchers for dinner and breakfast, unfortunately it is so late at the airport that all the concessions have closed so we have to go to sleep without dinner, and a free night's stay at marriot hotel. Our flight will be delayed to next morning at 9am. Well, that's fairly unfortunate... it seems that everything that could have gone wrong with the plane really did go wrong...

Christmas Day:
We wake up early at 6am to get to the airport to use our free food vouchers to have a big big breakfast. We enjoy our breakfast and after checking in again, we have our boarding passes ready to go. They have put us onto a flight at 835am - this is confusing for us at first because they told us we would be flying at 9am. but whatever, we have a flight, it is earlier, so be it. We arrive at the gate for our 830 am flight and at around 730am they announce that all YYZ flyers from yesterday's missed flight need to recheck in for a different boarding pass since our flight is still rescheduled for 9am - it is just not on the monitor of in the schedule. there was a bit of a mix up there but we got our new boarding passes and that was good. Unfortunately for some of the other passengers on the missed flight, they didn't hear the announcement so they acutally had to be put on STANDBY for the flight - wow it would have really sucked to be them. But then they had a reservation for the other flight to YYZ so at the time they were considered lucky since they would be flying earlier - of course until that flight was delayed until 1040am and then shortly after 11am it was cancelled altogether. as for my flight, we had our crew and at 9am, we were told that a maintenance check on the plane indicated that the brakes were still frozen on the plane. We waited until 10am for them to tell us that our flight would be leaving from a different gate on a different plane. at the new gate, there was no plane there. We waited to see if the new plane was arriving at the gate but after another hour, no plane had arrived. the captain was humourous with us but he began to say that this was becoming ridiculous (seriously...). He called in and demanded a plane!!! Around 11:30am we were told to board at yet another gate. When we arrived there, there was a plane sitting there but it wasn't ours. They moved that plane away and we waited 30 min for a new one. Once the new plane arrived, our captain got on board and we boarded shortly afterwards. We were all sitting in the plane by around 12pm. We waited for quite some time before they told us that they were waiting for our baggage to be loaded. Apparently they were unable to release the baggage from holding until everyone had seated on the plane. Then after we watched them load our baggage, we waited again. De-icing trucks came by and we watched as our plane got de-iced. They after the trucks stopped, an announcement came from the pilot saying that a light has come on the plane indicating a malfunction in the electric system. The pilot said that it is his theory that the de-icing fluid got on the electric system and the system shut itself down. Hopefully he said the system will kick itself back up but even if it does, the maintenance guy has to come by to investigate. This means the cabin was reopened and the pilot stepped out. As he was stepping out onto the jet bridge, apparnetly he slipped and fell. the people at the front of the plane caused a bit of commotion about it. but he got back up - thank goodness - he was ok. There was rumour that he had slipped between the plane and the jet bridge and fallen to the ground. that would be pretty terrible. We HAD just heard ambulances approaching our plane - but it was to the neighbouring gate, not ours. At this point, we had been sitting in the plane for about 2 hours. Someone on the plane was getting so fed up with the waiting that he was insisting on getting off the plane. an AA agent had to come onto the plane and let him know that if he insisted on leaving, the entire plane would be delayed even further because they would have to open the baggage carriage and remove his baggage from the plane. It took a little bit of insisting not only from the agent but from every person on the flight, to convince this man to sit back in his seat - we were NEARLY ready to fly. once the pilot got back into the plane safely and the maintenance guy left and ok'd our plane, and our door was resealed, we sat ready for take off. But we waited some more. the captain came back on to let us know that they were just waiting for the jet bridge to be moved away from our plane - that was the only thing stopping us from pulling out of the gate. after about 20 min, we finally started to move out of the gate. We departed just after 130pm. It was a smooth flight out to Toronto from O'Hare - only a 1.5 hr flight. The flight attendant gave us whatever we wanted for snacks - packages of nuts and trail mix - alcohol on the house.

I landed at Toronto Pearson around 330pm on Christmas day. I cannot believe what a terrible experience it was to get from Seattle to Toronto - perhaps the worst experience ever. I was skeptical about being able to leave Seattle at all but the worst fear really shoudl have been getting out of O'Hare. If you ever need to make a connecting flight - by all means possible, avoid flying through O'Hare. The WORST EVER AIRPORT - the monitor at the airport had delayed flights on nearly every flight listed. I also heard that the airport had to cancel over 100 flights on Christmas Eve - the weather conditions were just cold - no snow, no rain, no winds. They didn't know how to cope with cold weather.

a few good things out of this experience - we didn't have to pass through BUF and we didn't have to deal with bus rides. Hmma called the AA agent again after waiting 5 hours for our flight to YYZ on Christmas day and asked them to reschedule our departing flight from YYZ instead of from BUF as we had originally anticipated. The AA agent found us a flight from YYZ to ORD (oh boy...) and from ORD to SEA. We contemplated transferring through Dallas TX instead but they didn't have flights for the dates we wanted to travel on so now we just hvae to hope for better weather next week and that we can actually get out of ORD next week.

the other good thing is that I made it back to Toronto just in time to have Christmas dinner with my family. My sister was able to pick me up at the airport, take me to a bathroom to shower and freshen up, and then drive me straight to my aunt's house for dinner. I'm so glad i didn't miss it. It would have been two years in a row.

I hope everyone had a merry christmas yesterday :)