Greetings -

This is not meant to be a rant, but a question and something to think about; curious what others think. With travel comes delays and one cannot control mother nature -- anyways:

Any of you who travelled via ORD today (Sunday 8/19) probably saw it was a mess. Most flights delayed 2 hrs or cancelled.

I got caught up in a ground-stop en-route to ORD this afternoon. We initially took a wx delay and then boarded. Come pushback time an announcement is made that our release would be 2 hours later. I figured this was coming as I saw ORD go to a gound-stop just before boarding at http://www.fly.faa.gov/ois/ (this is a very good site if you go to the /ois/ )

We stayed connected to the jet bridge. The pilot clearly stated pax may get off the aircraft to look for alternative flights or use airport services, but they were doing so at their own risk. If we received a clearance prior to then, the pilot stated he could close the door, push back and leave even if pax were still in the terminal.

Aircraft was full - quite hot and uncomfortable on-board. While I had the option to deplane, I didn't want to take that risk (otherwise I'd be looking at a day or so to get a seat out or buy a new ticket).

At minimum, I felt the FA's should have provided a drink service as it was hot onboard. Ok, I could have gotten off the airplane too at the risk of being left behind. Thankfully the few who did risk getting off the plane made it back to the aircraft in time for our pushback.

Does AA have guidelines setup for when pax are on a grounded aircraft for a period of time after the well publicized incident at DFW? (followed by B6's problem at JFK).

Thoughts? Ok, this wasn't a 6+ hour delay (and we had the jetbridge up) - but at the same time it is a catch-22; deplane for comfort at risk or not deplane. If the cabin was nice and cool inside it would have been an easy two hour+ wait. (I was in Y)

When I did get to ORD it was a real mess with all the delays and cancelled flights. The rebooking queues were tremendously long. Not a good day for ORD, but I had some time to visit the Flagship Lounge for a light dinner before hauling from the end of the K pier to the end of the G pier to get my eagle flight which was listed as on-time.

Eagle wasn't being pro-active like mainline at listing delays. My gut feeling said my flight wasn't going to go at time, but at the FL they told me the equipment was coming in and would be there. Got to the gate, sure enough, the plane was there. One problem, no crew. I then found out the crew was coming in from GRR. Went to the "G" AC, fired up flightaware and I was able to accurately find out when they would be in.

If any of you were at ORD this afternoon/evening, I hope you got where you were going. Tempers were really flaring over in the G concourse with some passengers among some of the frustrated travellers. On days like this, I really feel bad for the gate agents as they do take a lot of abuse from passengers who think they know it all. Wx at ORD itself wasn't too bad, but there was a line of t-storm activity to the south and west which really messed everything up. Was mainly just light rain at ORD.

Aside from comments, anyone have ORD experiences this Sunday?

SDF_Traveler