"Traffic Jam" at ORD?
 

We all know O'hare is notorious for delays, but I found this announcement from the GA amusing:

"The a/c left the hanger 30 minutes ago, but is stuck in a jam up on the taxiway. We have no way of knowing how much longer it will take for the a/c to taxi or how close it, but the tower has confirmed that it is stuck somewhere in the jam up."

Now I have heard of long queues to take off, but 45+ minutes to taxi? Does anyone know if there was some sort of accident or is this just normal ops for ord?

Take a look at the FAA's map of ORD.

If (as is now the case according to weather.com) winds were coming from the S-SE, then ORD was probably using 14 L & 14 R (with most heavies on 14R, since it's 13000' long).

Now, I don't know where AA's hangars are, but I'm guessing the South Cargo Ramp area, since (a) UAL's hangars are at the threshhold of 14R, and (b) either South Ramp or NE Ramp would be closer to T3 (but the FBO is at NE ramp). So, to get from the South Cargo Ramp to T3, your a/c would need to get a break in the traffic on the runway most suitable for heavy departures at just the time of day when many of the heavies are leaving for Europe. Then you have to "swim upstream" across all the traffic outbound from T5 to 14R (plus any traffic AA is sending to 14R), and get to your gate.

Also, as you can see here, there are some restrictions on the use of taxiway B by jumbos passing each other -- and B is the taxiway that loops around the ramp entrances.

Or, they're just doing this to piss you off! ;)

This thread made me think of this sound bite:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GUWyR9rTI9E

Might be a pretty accurate example of what was going on at the time...

I think this is a gate agent just buying time. Taxiing anywhere around ORD should not take more than 15 minutes to 20 minutes total. Even with bad weather and planes stacked up for takeoffs, there are plenty of taxiways to get around O'hare.

The AA hangers are near the United hangers on the NW side of the airport. The only active runway they would likely have to cross is 9L, which is usually used for departures but is occasionally used for arrivals. If it were being used for departures, they would have been able to taxi on T without disrupting the flow.

I am guessing it just took the crew longer to get the plane out of the hanger than they thought.

Or maybe we should look into it before one assumes that the GA is a liar.

Flightstats.com indeed shows

Volume:Multiple Aircraft Taxi Congestion Departure 16/30 Increasing Oct 29 1:33 PM Oct 29 4:19 PM.

ORD still can backup, even with the new runway during the evening rush in crummy weather like yesterday (and today). Thankfully, it is less common now. I've recently been on a flight that pushed only 10 minutes late, only to taxi for a half hour and finally join the queue and we were number 20 for takeoff. It gets worse when the winds are shotgunning around and they are juggling runways.

This is not that unrealistic. Though it is a different airport and era, back in the mid 90's I used Delta from ATL - TPA. Seemed every Friday night when i wanted to get home to FL, the L-1011 we had assigned to us was needed elseswhere. Since TPA was such a short flight, I guess, and they could turn it around without impacting much, they shipped our plane off to another city while we waited for a replacement aircraft to come to the gate. They would point out that we were waiting for one from the international gates. But the plane was fighting traffic flow so we had to wait for the rush hour to be over. That always turned into a delay of several hours. This happened at least 6 times in 3 months.