Misadventures at the Airport

Well, it's two weeks later and here's more about misadventures at the airport. Yesterday I took Dorota back to the airport to go home. At the United line she was directed into a line for quick service since she was going all the way to Warsaw. Good thing it was the quick line for it didn't move for at least 25 minutes. Meanwhile I was entertaining myself watching the TSA pull bags out of X-ray screening for inspection. What came out?

The first was a bag with a wrapped Christmas gift. How many times have we been told it is OK to pack wrapped gifts? Well, this turned out to simply be a wrapped coffee table type book. The next bag was way more interesting! It was a huge bag and when opened, I could see it was totally full of liquor!! Gift bottles of liquor -- quart and liter size bottles. The third bag that I watched get searched had a cheese gift pack inside. The bag was pulled and inspected apparently to look at the pancake syrup that was part of the gift. Dorota was very concerned that I was being inconvenienced. I told her it was actually great entertainment.

The line continued to move slow because people had to literally re-pack to avoid paying the over 50 pounds surcharge. All of this could be avoided if there was a place outside of the line to weigh suitcases. People could re-pack before ever getting into a check in line. Of course, that solution is probably simply too logical.

The first thing that Dorota heard was that yes she could go on the 11:40 AM flight, but it probably wasn't going to leave until 3 PM. She had a ticket for the 1:40 PM but was trying for the earlier flight into Chicago so she didn't miss her overseas connection.

I'm anxiously waiting to hear from her to learn what the going home trip was like. All day I've been sending good thoughts to Chicago just in case she had to sit there 24 hours waiting for today's flight to Warsaw.

And I'm so glad I decided to not fly through Chicago next summer. United and O'Hare are on meltdown. I've not seen anything functional there for nearly two years.