My sister Carol experienced some of this summer’s travel craziness firsthand yesterday when her American Airlines flight, operated by Republic Airways, from Nantucket (ACK) to Charlotte (CLT) was delayed by an hour because of thunderstorms. In fact, lightning struck the airport so they couldn’t refuel the plane at ACK.
Carol called me when the gate agents originally said that the plane was going to make a quick stop at LaGuardia to get gas. That’s when I said, “Whoa whoa whoa … first of all, there’s no such thing as a quick stop in LGA (especially in the evening) and secondly, there’s a ground stop there, according to the FAA.” The ground stop, which was lifted shortly after, was due to thunderstorms.
My sister told the flight attendants about the ground stop and they said operations had just changed the stop to Boston, which made much more sense. However, I said, “I doubt you’re going to make your connection to Palm Beach since you only have a two-hour layover and the plane was already delayed by an hour.”
She debated about staying in Nantucket or chancing it. She went with the latter and got really lucky as her CLT to PBI flight was delayed by 90 minutes and after running through the airport, she just made the flight. She said it was so stressful but glad it all worked out.
