Date: December 28, 2022
I am writing this from my parent's home in Toronto. Today is Wednesday. Christmas Eve was Saturday, which means that Christmas Day was Sunday. It was several weeks ago that I booked my flight for Friday, Christmas Eve Eve. When I booked it, take off was scheduled for 7:30am.
So when I woke up on Thursday, I had less than 24 hours until my flight. This was the first day of a vacation that would stretch into the New Year. My plan for the day was to pack my bag and check in to a hotel near the airport.
It was around 10:30am or 11am on Thursday when I got a text message from the airline that my flight would be delayed from 7:30am to 2:00pm. I had a choice to make: stay home that night or go to the hotel anyways. I chose to go to the hotel anyways. In hindsight, this decision likely made it possible for me to catch my flight at all.
The Thursday evening weather in Seattle felt fairly cold for the climate: a few degrees below freezing. After checking in to the hotel, I decided to have dinner at the hotel restaurant rather than brave the cold for a fast food place or for Denny's. After dinner, I went to my hotel room. I fell asleep around midnight.
Around 5am, I woke up. I checked my flight. The flight schedule still reflected that it had been delayed until 2pm. I went back to sleep until around 8am. I went to the hotel restaurant for breakfast. The morning news reported that the airport temporarily closed all of its runways due to icy weather. Public transit was completely shut down.
If I had canceled my hotel stay, then it is likely that I would not have been able to even get to the airport. Without public transit, I would have had to rely on an Uber or a taxi. Given the treacherous weather conditions, I may have opted to stay home and reschedule my flight. But, finding myself at the hotel, I was perfectly positioned make my flight with plenty of time to spare.
I stayed in my hotel room until 10:30 or so and then I checked out. I left shortly after 11am, on the hotel's airport shuttle which, thankfully, was operating. The roads were mostly clear. It was a nice short ride to the airport.
At the airport, the airline counters were swamped. A lot of people were sitting with their bags. I braced myself for the longest security line I had ever seen at SeaTac.
This security nightmare did not materialize. The lines themselves were short. There is no way through TSA without a boarding pass and a flight to catch. With so many flights cancelled or delayed, not many people had both those things. Although it was past 11:30am when I started my walk through the terminal away from security, it did not feel like it took very long at all to get through. My first destination within the terminal was an airport lounge.
When I saw the line outside the airport lounge, I thought better of it. I headed to my gate, which was at one of the satellite terminals. I found a seat near the gate to wait until boarding. Everything so far seemed normal enough. The weather was bad and the flight was delayed, but those things happen all the time: what could be so special about this delayed flight?
Around 1:50pm, I realized that boarding had yet to start. The airline's smartphone app was useless because it still displayed a boarding time based off of the original 7:30am take off. I got up and wandered to a spot where I could see the airline employees working the desk at the gate.
I overheard a man talking with the gate agent about how he could get to Ottawa. There is no way to do that — especially not with this airline — without connecting in Toronto. This man suggested routing through New York or Boston. The airline employee politely explained to him that his suggestions were simply not possible.
The airline employees waited until 2:05pm to announce that the flight was delayed further: to 4pm. The airline's messaging system thought it was moved up from 4pm to 3:30pm which generated a hilarious "Your flight [...] is departing early." text message.
At this point, it looked like the flight would land after midnight. I told my parents not to stay up for my sake. I decided to call in a favour from a friend to pick me up at the airport in the middle of the night. Miraculously, my friend agreed. It is good to have people whom you can count on.
While I was on the phone with my friend, I heard an announcement offering meal vouchers. I managed to politely get off the phone with my friend so that I could stand in line for a literal meal ticket.
The airline gave me US$20 for food. It was a reasonable sum under the circumstances, but it was not going to go very far at an airport restaurant in late 2022. Once I had the vouchers in hand, I was faced with a dilemma: do I go to the main terminal concourses for a restaurant there or do I stay in the satellite terminal. I chose to stay, despite the long line.
This food line moved very slowly. By the time that the airline announces that my flight is boarding, I am only second in line. I asked the couple in front of me if I could go ahead of them because my flight was boarding. They agreed. The restaurant employee sounded annoyed to be dealing with my meal voucher.
The employee moved so slowly. I agonized at the counter. As I was waiting for my food, I heard each boarding group called in turn. When I finally got my food, my group was already boarding.
I did manage to get in line to board my plane in time. I sat down in my window seat around 3:40pm. There was a couple in the row in front of me. They had the aisle and middle seats along with a lap infant who was likely between 12 and 18 months old. A man whom I recognize from behind me in the food line had the window seat in the row in front of me.
The plane finished boarding around 4pm. The pilot announced that we were now to wait for deicing. While I was initially waiting to eat my food until we were up in the air, I took that opportunity to eat my meal. Some 40 minutes later, nothing had changed: we were still waiting. At some point, the pilot told us that, of the two available deicing trucks, one of them had had an issue. We were reliant on a single deicing truck to clear the plane.
It was after 5pm, likely around 5:30pm, when the deicing crew started work on our plane. After 2 hours on the tarmac, the flight crew gave out water and granola bars to everyone on the plane. The cabin started to get hot. The pilot told us that due to the deicing fumes, he couldn't bring fresh air from outside into the cabin.
Later, the pilot thanked us for our patience as the deicing crew dealt with the "extraordinary" quantity of ice on the fuselage. The pilot used the phrase "unprecedented times" to describe the situation. I burst out laughing. If there is anything in December that should be described as precedented, it is winter weather. Reflecting on that phrase now, clearly the issue was not the weather nor any sort of mechanical failure, but the airline's unprecedented staffing levels.
Deicing did not complete until after 6:30pm. The plane waited still as the airline had to load more bottled water for the flight. Clearly we were going to need it. After that brief delay, the plane took off around 7pm.
The flight itself was fine.
The plane landed in Toronto around 2:15am. I sent a message to my friend. By 2:30am, he was getting ready to pick me up. The pilot informed us on the plane that we were waiting on the ground crew to prepare our gate. The pilot mentioned that there were other planes who had been waiting since 11pm. This did not sound good.
Around 3am, the pilot gave us an estimate of 30 minutes before we would be at the gate. The plane did not actually get to the gate until 4am. It seemed like there must have been but a single ground crew working the graveyard shift that Christmas Eve Eve. Even though we were parked at the gate around 4am, it was not until 4:30am that the door finally opened and passengers started deplaning.
I breezed through Canadian customs. It was no more than 15 minutes between when I stepped off the plane and when I got into my friend's car. Fortunately, I had no checked luggage, so most of my time was spent walking through the airport.
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