Today I was trying to fly MSP-ORD-SEA, so as to meet my wife in Chicago and share the same flight to a conference in Seattle.

Unfortunately, the plane for my 5:15pm MSP-ORD flight (UA 658) was arriving from EWR. Eventually that flight from EWR arrived 3 hours late — late enough for me to miss my connection, because the ORD-SEA flight was actually on time (its equipment was coming from SLC). So, thanks to a helpful MSP UC agent, I had a hotel room arranged in Chicago and a seat on the 7:30am ORD-SEA flight.

Except, moments before UA 658 was about to board, a message comes through delaying it an additional 3.5 hours due to a lack of crew.

At that point I decided to bail - I cashed in some SkyPesos to take the direct MSP-SEA flight on DL. It took me 40 minutes to get through to GS (the MSP UC having closed by now) in order to get them to not cancel my return trip from SEA.

When I arrived in SEA a few minutes ago, I learned that UA 658 was still delayed! It is now scheduled to leave 17.5 hours late, at 10:15am Monday.

And all that for an itinerary that never touched the Eastern time zone…