Traveling by air these days

RR was supposed to be coming home last night. His Delta flight was to land at 9:47PM last night and I was to pick him up at the airport. If everything went as planned, I wouldn't be writing this in my blog.

The main problem was that Indy was hit by a amazing thunderstorm last night. Our weather radio gave a warning that a thunderstorm was coming from Carmel. After a week without rain and temperature yesterday around 35 C/95 C, I suppose rain was expected. However, I did not expect it to be this bad. When I left the house, it had already started raining. I returned my Red Box DVD at our nearest Kroeger and decided that if I left for the airport then and drove very slowly, I could make it to the airport by 9:30PM. The road on 86th Street was extremely flooded. I was only going 30 MPH on a 40 MPH road and I would still make a huge splash over the road. Going on I-465 wasn't so bad, though I still drove under the speed limit at 50MPH. On the way, I saw some amazing lightning and even passed by some motorcyclists! I thought to myself, "Ok, they are either very brave, or very stupid to be riding out in a motorcycle in weather like this!"

When I was close to the airport, it was raining so hard that I literally could not see while only driving at 20MPH! Since I have not had much experience driving in extremely rainy weather, I wasn't sure where I could park to wait for the rain to stop. However, I saw two other cars put on their hazard lights and pull over to the right side, so I did the same. When the rain dissipated a little bit, I started again for the parking garage. I pushed the button for a ticket, but the all parking levels were full except for the one on Level 3. I arrived at about 9:30PM, only to find out from the monitors that the plane was going to be an hour late. All the flights that were supposed to land at 9PM or later, were delayed. Many people were just glued to the monitors, as if it was a life and death situation. Half an hour later, I was surprised to hear from RR and I thought that they had an emergency landing. He explained that the Indy airport was closed and that they were in South Bend refueling. He said that he would let me know if there was anymore news. We hung up and  I was still hoping at that time that they were going to be here at 10:47PM. The monitor changed 30 minutes later and it said that the flight was diverted to South Bend, Indiana, but there was no estimated time of arrival. The majority of Delta flights had the "diverted" status.

Many of us were confused about what the "diverted" status meant. Since RR had already mentioned that they were in South Bend, I knew that it just meant they were diverted in South Bend and would be flying from there to Indy. Fortunately for me, I was not totally bored waiting for RR to come home. I met two men who were eagerly waiting for their wives to come back from the Ukraine. Their wives were on the same flight as RR and one of them explained to me that with the weather this bad, planes are often diverted to other places to refuel. It used to be that when gas prices were low, planes would have a full tank of gas and the pilots would circle around until the storms dissipated. However, since airlines are cutting costs, planes are not filled with a full tank of gas, but only enough to make the trip. Also being a native Hoosier, he explained that decades ago, Indiana used to have 80MPH trains from Indy to Kokomo. However, since no one rode them, they just went out of business. It was interesting to learn this piece of history. I hope that one day, trains can be brought back.

I continued to check the monitor for status changes and at the very end the whole flight was taken out. I wasn't sure what this meant so I asked one of the guys and he said that his wife told him that they were going to board at another gate. The monitor never updated and we were left to rely on updates from our loved ones. The flight eventually arrived at 1AM this morning. I was so happy to see RR and he was happy to see me.

Overall, it was an interesting adventure for both of us, but not one that we would like to have again.