Flying With Gretel: The Adventure Has Already Started

©Depositphotos.com/alex_2607

Gretel and I are flying to Knoxville, Tenn for the PetSafe Paw Print Blogger Summit Wednesday and our flight reservations were set but then the fire happened, making our trip an adventure before we even off of the ground.

Friday, before we left for our weekend-long camping trip, I caught the news about the Chicago flight tower.  A disgruntled communications contractor assigned to the Aurora FAA radar center set fire to it, basically destroying the whole thing. The incident forced an evacuation and grounding all flights at O’Hare and Midway airports.

My flight to Knoxville with Gretel, and our return flight, both had layovers at the Chicago O’Hare airport. You an imagine my ears perked up at the news Friday morning but the extent of the damage was not known at that time. I shrugged it off literally saying to myself, “Well, I’m glad we are not flying until Wednesday because everything will be back to normal by then”.

WRONG!

Thousands of flights into and out of the two Chicago airports have been delayed or canceled since the fire. a fire damaged a key. Even yesterday, Monday, there were 300 lights cancelled and several delays.

I panicked and contacted Petsafe. They were sympathetic to my concerns – that I couldn’t get stuck at the O’Hare airport with Gretel, or at all because of school – and worked hard to get my flight re-routed.

Now Gretel and I will be flying to Knoxville via the Dallas, Texas  airport. The original flight was with American Airlines and they made reservations for Gretel. The first leg of the re-routed flight is now operated by Alaska on behalf of American. Luckily, Alaska was super nice and helpful when I called and I got a reservation for Gretel no problem.

Tragedy 1 of the trip averted.

Follow Gretel and I tomorrow on our Facebook page as I navigate an airport and flight with a dog or the first time.

This is part of the Adventure Dog Blog Hop hosted by yours truly, DOGthusiast and Tiffany’s Diamond Dogs. Clicking the little thumbnails down below will transport you to other doggy adventures.

Don’t forget to join us on Twitter the third Wednesday of each month at 5 pm PST/8 pm PST for #AdventureDogChat.

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