Right Now for
New Orleans, LA

Snow
33°F
Feels Like
24°F
Updated: Dec 11 08:45 a.m. CT

Deicing last night at IAH was a total mess. We were scheduled to depart at 6pm, and were delayed about 2.5 hours. At first, only 1 truck/deice-pad was operating, so planes on that runway got serviced in decent time. But we were waiting at the other runway and the truck didn't show for about 2 hours.

All in all, It seems like others fared much worse.

I suppose this isn't required at IAH very often.

I feel sorry for those trapped on 1676. I was trapped on 1776. The big difference - our flight was quite empty and so the atmosphere was much more bearable. I contemplating trying to jump on 1676 but it looked like a total mad house at the gate and decided an empty but later plane would be far more pleasant.

Scheduled Departure: 7:15PM
Scheduled Arrival: 11ish PM
Boarded: 9:15 PM
Pushed Back: 11:30PM?
De-iced and took off at 3:30AM
Landed at 7:20AMish

So time butt was in seat if I have math correctly was just shy of 9 hours.

We had a bit of a party atmosphere in the front of the first class section for the first few hours, but after a few drinks, one of the guys up front started to get a bit grouchy which killed the mood.

Flight crew was fantastic: Did everything in their power to make us comfortable; the pilot kept coming back through the plane and would talk one-on-one with us.

But boy was IAH one big giant ClusterF* last night.

I can't say I am surprised it is exactly what I'd expect when getting such snow at IAH.

Once a decade or so. I'm surprised we've had another snow so soon after the last one (just a few years back over Christmas). Given how rare it is, it probably wouldn't be cost-effective to invest lots of money in de-icing equipment for IAH.

If CO needs heat to melt any ice or snow, have that excellent bartender at the North C-concourse PC make a giant batch on his volcanic Bloody Marys. The heat from one of them would melt 1,000 square miles of yard-deep snow!

My worst night ever of flying in my history with Continental. Sat for 7 hours on plane and was finally cancelled with no help to find a place to sleep!

Full rundown: http://flyertalk.com/forum/showpost....2&postcount=39

When I flew into IAH this morning the airport was a mess... Looks like CO had to cancel a bunch of flights yesterday and had crew issues do to late arrivals at the outposts last night.

There were planes parked all over the tarmac, everywhere you could find to stick a plane. Saw everything from ERJ's to 767's sitting around from the mess.

Inside the terminal was worse... oh, I felt bad for people... there were a ton of people sleeping on benches and the floors from what must have been last nights cancelled flights.

I have to give a lot of credit to the Elite desk today as I was scheduled on the 7am today out of MCI but I got a flight notification on my phone at 1:30am saying 1hr 46 delay because of crew (they arrived at MCI 4 hrs late last night). I checked and the 6am was on time but showed only 1 seat left in Worldspan. I called up and the CSR switched me to the 6am flight with no problems... saved my whole day becasue it would have been one misconnect after another if I got into IAH that late.

Wow, didn't realize how lucky I was to get out. Was on the 5:17 departure to BWI--we left about 20 minutes late and made up most of the time... Sorry to hear all the misery here. Of course I may get my comeuppance tomorrow as snow's predicted here in the DC area.

2 flights IAH - CRP didn't make it last night. Xiled due to WX. That was a mess for crp as 2 early am flights had no planes. according to gate agent this morning, she watched the 11p arrival come in as she arrived at works at 3:45a. fortunantly, I was on 10A departure. My friend who was booked on the 8a flight was on my 10a flight because her plane stayed in houston.

We live in Texas because we do not like snow.

My brother was on the last flight out to JAN...I believe he said his flight finally left after 1am. We swapped flight horror stories tonight. I've always been fortunate enough to not be on the plane but instead stuck at the terminal.

I've got a connection through IAH on Fri, and it is forcasted to snow. I can't re-route (going to GUA). Have there been improvements since last year's nightmare with de-icing?

[Being based in DEN where snow is common, I'm affraid of snow in Houston.]

I hear they have the keys to the deicing truck out and ready this year ^

So glad I'm fyling to HNL on Thursday and not Friday

Getting back next Tuesday, so I won't have to worry about the back side of the storm either. It'll probably be back to being 65 by then.

They probably wont re-route people until Friday. Perhaps they could route you to LA on UA and then catch CO LAX-HNL-GUA?