This is NOT going well! First trip abroad
 

Today we dropped our college aged daughter off at the Des Moines airport, weather conditions in Chicago delayed her flight out for 2 hours. Finally departed at 6:46 p.m. as of this writing she is STILL in the air, it is now 9:20 p.m. This is normally a 60 minute flight that has lasted SO FAR 2.5 hours and she is not expected to land for another hour. They are just circling about the midwest I guess because of continued weather conditions at O'Hare.

She has missed her international flight (none left for this evening)and will have to hunker down in the airport for a flight in the morning. I just needed to ventilate, or drink, one of the two!

We had to call the emergency number for the college course group she is supposed to meet up with in London, to let them know she will be a bit late, 15+ hours it looks like.

The cost per minute in the air is going down drastically, I guess that is a positive thing!

I know you must be worried, but I am sure she will be fine. If she survives this, England will be easy! Try to rest and I hope she arrives safely and has no more mishaps. :)

Ugh, I sympathize with your anxiety over this. So tough to have your child--regardless of age--in a situation you have no control over.

But, look at it this way: She's having a great learning experience dealing with this and it will serve her well in the future, as she finds herself in situations that call for patience and self-reliance.

Let us know when she lands!

If she's still in the air, and you're still concerned about the whereabouts of the plane, try flightstats.com. Really came in handy for me when DD was coming home from NYC a few weeks ago and the plane got delayed because of thunderstorms.

(If it makes you feel any better, we had a real scare when DD was in Israel in 2005 and the war broke out and we couldn't get her a ticket to Athens because they didn't do e-tickets, so she had to fly to Rome. Not fun, but we got through it, and you will too.)

I am ready for bed finally. She arrived at OHare at 9:47 p.m. 3 hours in the air from Des Moines. There was only one flight left that night left to London on any airline. A 9:50 flight on American, it had been delayed a whole 10 minutes. Daughter ran from Gate G19 to L8 in less than 10 minutes and got the LAST seat on the plane as it was sold out.

She took off on that flight at 10:08 we were soooo relieved as she was having a meltdown thinking she would be staying at the airport all night or trying to get a room for just a few hours.

Wow, now you can sleep, and your daughter will be exhausted when she arrives, but, she is young and will bounce back quickly.
It would have been a very stressful evening for me , whew, its over!
Hope the rest of her trip is wonderful, and remember these sorts of " adventures" while scary, or annoying, make great stories later!!

Wow, this takes me back! I had almsot the exact same thing happen to me on my way to my study abroad program in Paris many moons ago. When we landed at the connecting airport the ground crew told me I was already too late. So I was waiting in line at the ticket counter to rebook my flight for the next day. Then as if from heaven above I heard my name from the loud speaker telling me to run to the gate. Apparently the flight to Paris hadn't actually left the gate and someone had me paged. Needless to say I was beyond relieved, as this was my first flight out of the country.

So yes this will be a story to tell! Hopefully you'll sleep a little easier tonight. Best of luck to your daughter!

Good for your daughter -- catching a connecting flight in less than 20 minutes sounds like a major feat -- but her luggage certainly hasn't made it, so she'll be without it for a while I'm afraid.

No problem sleeping on the plane, even with a full flight, when you have things like that to tire you out!

Did her luggage make it?

Glad she made it. We once had a mad ride on one of those little carts with a fast driver to get us to our gate for a trip to Paris. We made it, but our luggage didn't.

I just read today an anonymous quote that said, "A journey of 1,000 miles begins with a single delay of two hours before take off." There was also one I liked that said, "Far away is only far away if you don't go there."

We are trying to get ahold of her this evening. Obviously she is there, the credit card has been to a Thai restaurant in Kensington! We are exhausted on this end, but she seems to be out still, it would be nearly 12:30 a.m. right now and wasn't back to her hotel room yet. I wish I had that much stamina, she drained us of every ounce of energy we have and now she is out and about. Just like a college student!

I don't know if she has her luggage even yet, I am sure she is quite the sight in her clothes she has worn for 30 hours or so.

If only the energy of the young could be bottled!

:D

LOL at the credit-card-as-a-tracking-device! :D

4khansen - well, I'm slightly smiling about this only because we've been through this with our daughter 4 times and know exactly what you're going through!! She's also in college and these trips NEVER seem to go as planned. But do they worry about it? NO, just the parents back home. They just go with the flow and seem maddeningly unconcerned about it. Hope things go well - and that you are able to relax.

BTW - you mentioned the Des Moines airport. Are you in Iowa and surviving the floods? My wife is from NW Iowa and we've been anguishing over the plight of some of her relatives. Hope your situation is OK.

Thankfully we are in SW Iowa.... but traveled this week through NE and SE Iowa. It is getting back to normal, but lots of damage in Cedar Rapids and Iowa City..the university of Iowa will have huge expenditures to get things ready for fall semester.

My son had a similar experience flying from Chicago to Frankfurt when he was 17; the first leg of his trip on NW from Chicago to Detroit was cancelled; luckily, he called me and by the time he got to the front of the line, I had him rebooked albeit from Chicago to Minneapolis to Amsterdam to Frankfurt. he arrived, met up with the driver to take him to Heidelburg and was only a few hours late meeting his dad for a father/son trip. I was also very worried but he had a blackeberry with him and sent me a message each he took off or landed.

I'm also from NW iowa originally - have talked to friends in the Des Moines and Iowa City/Cedar Rapids area...how awful.