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The flight on Friday morning was cancelled. I’m desperately looking for a new flight. The booking website is down. I’m about to check out of the hotel. What now?
It’s nothing new for a long time, and yet it was only three weeks ago that I was stranded along with hundreds of thousands of people around the world during the CrowdStrike outage. As I look back, I realize that amidst the travel hell, the main thing I took away from that time was a deep sense of humanity.
On Saturday, after my second canceled flight, I waited in line for 6 1/2 hours to get a new ticket. During that time, I met Emily. She was trying to get to a teachers’ conference in Orlando while her husband, Alex, and their two children were trying to get home to Alabama. Right behind them, a woman, her parents, and the most patient three-year-old I’ve ever met were waiting for a new flight to Connecticut. These were strangers who lived thousands of miles away from me, and yet in that moment, it felt like we had become instant friends. By the end of the day, we all had new flights, high-fived, and even took a selfie together.
At 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, I met Rob from La Crosse, Wisconsin, while waiting to check in for my third flight. I was amazed that he didn’t even have a carry-on. Rob had been attending the same work conference as me, so we passed the time comparing our experiences. After three hours of incremental departure delays, it seemed like the flight was going to be canceled (spoiler alert: it was). But by now, I had started booking alternate flights so I could leave the gate and switch to another plane. Rob wasn’t so lucky. I wished him luck and left, feeling a little guilty and wishing I could know when he would be coming home, too.
While waiting for my fourth flight, I found an outlet to charge my phone. I realize now that during the entire ordeal, I didn’t see anyone fighting over outlets or anything. On the contrary, I saw countless strangers watching over bags or holding up spots for each other in line so solo travelers like me could fill up a water bottle, take a bathroom break, or grab some much-needed food. Rather than drowning in helplessness, it seemed like everyone’s instinct was to focus on helping others.
After a storm delay, my fourth flight finally took off. During a layover in Phoenix, I met Lisa, Jason, and their children from Des Moines. Their daughter is a published author (I ordered her book and can’t wait to read it), and their son played basketball and, like me, did long jump in track. Sitting and chatting with all of them, I felt like I’d been adopted. When we finally landed back in Minnesota at 2 a.m. on Monday, 2 1/2 days after my first canceled flight, I waved goodbye to them before getting off the plane.
