Unless you live under a rock or far from the east coast of the United States, you probably know that we got hit with a pretty big storm yesterday and into today.  With the 40 mph+ wind gusts and drifting snow it’s difficult to estimate how much snow we got, but an on-line storm tracker said we got 12-16″.

So what’s the problem? After all, it’s New England, storms like this aren’t exactly unusual.

Well, Darling Boy had a 4:20 pm flight out of Logan Airport yesterday, he’s spending the week at my mom’s in Pittsburgh.

Getting to the airport was easy, and after a 30 minute wait to check in (since he’s an unaccompanied minor, I needed a gate pass, which meant we couldn’t use one of the self-check in kiosks), and just a 2 minute wait a the security check-point, we arrived at the gate 45 minutes before the flight was scheduled to board.

Except there was 1 problem- there was no aircraft there, and it was almost white-out conditions at the airport.

So we waited. And waited, until the plane arrived just 5 minutes before it was scheduled to depart, which obviously wasn’t going to happen.  Finally around 5pm they start boarding DB’s flight.  As an unaccompanied minor, he would board last, which happened about 5:20ish, I think.

Then more waiting.  I couldn’t leave yet, airline regulations state that the person dropping off an unaccompanied minor has to stay until the aircraft takes off.  I couldn’t leave once he boarded, and I couldn’t leave once the plane pushed back from the gate, I had to wait.

While I’m waiting for the plane to push back, the gate crew is talking about 4 passengers that they are waiting for.  As it turns out, there was a family of 4 on a flight in-bound from Ft Lauderdale who needed to make this connection.  Listening in to the conversation, I heard one of the gate crew say something about this family being stuck in Boston until Wednesday if they didn’t make the flight, ALL other flights were booked full until then.

They decided to hold the flight, already over an hour late, and with worsening weather conditions, for this family.  Keep in mind, their in-bound flight hadn’t even landed at this time.

I think JetBlue absolutely made the right decision.  Sure, 100 or so people would be arriving that much later in Pittsburgh.  Hell, my mother was already sitting in the Pittsburgh airport waiting to pick up DB!  But think about this family, who would have been stranded in Boston for several days.

They did a good job communicating what was going on- I asked and they said an announcement was made on the aircraft to let the passengers know the reason for the delay, plus there must have been some coordination with the in-bound Ft Lauderdale flight this family was on.  It parked 2 gates away and I was watching- these 4 people were the first ones off the plane!

A little after 6pm DB’s flight pushed back from the gate.  But remember, I couldn’t leave yet, I was stuck until it lifted off.

So I waited some more.  For a short while they held aircraft in place while plows cleared the runway, and DB’s flight finally lifted off at 6:45pm, 2 hours and 25 minutes late. I suppose it could have been worse, look at this:

One last adventure remained- I had a 40 mile drive home!

Not knowing what road conditions were like, a Twitter friend who lives along my route home generously offered to let me crash at her place for the night, which I seriously considered doing.  Fortunately, the Mass Pike wasn’t too bad, and while a night snowed in with my friend was VERY appealing, that would have meant leaving Veronica and PP stranded at home until I arrived sometime Monday.

Ten minutes after I pulled into the driveway my mom called from Pittsburgh, she had DB with her.

We both made it, later than expected, but we made it!