Plight for the flight

My flight was to leave at 3:50PM (17-FEB-2008). I reached the airport at 1:40PM, checked in my luggage, grabbed a quick bite and was waiting at the gate only to realize that the flight was delayed by an hour and the new time of departure is at 5:30PM. Little worried, I went to the counter to check alternate routes to reach Chicago so that I can safely board my 8:10PM (9:10PM EST) flight to Argentina. To spice things up, there were no alternate flights - all flights going into Chicago were delayed due to bad weather.

At 5:20PM EST we were all seated and ready to taxi only to hear the captain say "we will have to stay seated on the tarmac and the next update whether we fly out today or not will be relayed to us at 6:40PM EST." The lady next to me was worried and called her son-in-law to confirm the status of outbound flights from Chicago. The flight from Chicago to Argentina was to leave on time 8:10PM CST. There were 8 other passengers that were going to Argentina. They were letting people choose to get off the plane to stay back in NJ or stay on baord. I told the captain that I would like to get off the plane if we do not start by 6:40PM EST.

At 6:35PM EST we got the go ahead and our flight took off at 6:50PM EST. The captain said he will do his best to take us safely by 7:45PM CST and that the only thing we could hope for is we might make the 8:10PM CST flight - before reaching the destination airport, captains normally radio in on their position to request the connecting flights to wait, if they can.

The crew was kind enough to let all 8 passengers bound to Argentina to move to the front of the plane and sit in the 1st class. The crew announced that the connecting flight to Argentina was to leave from gate H15. We made it into Chicago at 7:45PM CST and we taxied to gate H17. We hopped off the plane at 8:00PM CST and hurried to board our connecting flight to Argentina.

All in all it was one eventful start of the journey to the Southern Hemisphere.