I saw the "Trip Report Part 4" link in the sidebar and knew this couldn't be good.

The announcements likened to Chinese Water Torture. What, no earplugs? Setting the cell phone alarm for a wakey wakey call in time for the flight?

Going straight to the rental car w/o stopping for luggage? Then, complaining about what a small airport it is? I've actually done this a couple of times, but ONLY at a major airport & only when it's obvious the luggage is going to take a while. Yet, she rightly notes it's Springfield Illinois, calls it the smallest town on the face of earth...if it's that small, then it's obvious the luggage won't take long to unload and that carousel should have been her first stop.

Drama like "my family has called 500 times". Really? That many? I was answering 500 phone calls I'd be late enough to miss a lot more than my luggage.

Storms in Illinois that are bad enough ancel & delay flights out of Chicago--not sure why it would be a mystery as to why flights elsewhere in Illinois are delayed?

Now the United.bomb customer service line (so glad I don't have to talk to Bangalore when I call AA) guy first saying it's just a change fee & an expedia fee, THEN saying it's nearly $1K US and she can't go back to the previous res., that's just wrong.

I would say her determination to take care of her family is amazing. Even though its completely obvious that most of her troubles were self-inflicted, and clearly prevent-able (and as such, difficult for gathering sympathy) her determination to care for her family seems to be what drove her to persist thru them all.

I'm sure there's a few people on this board who've incorrectly booked the wrong city, or the wrong day, etc. by accident and have had to cough up the change fee...and I've seen many occasions in ORD where people found out the hard way that there's two Springfield's, five hours apart. I've even been sitting on the plane when the FA reads connecting gate info., a pax goes, "Which Springfield was that?" and the FA doesn't know, or says which one it is and the passenger replies with something that can't be posted here.