Cracked Windshield at 37,000 Feet

I had suggested that my day today was going to be long and ugly in my last post. I had no idea. It started this morning at 330AM, getting up then so I could make my 600AM flight to LaGuardia. All this so I could get into NYC before 11AM so I could make the speaking engagement, do my thing, and get back on a flight to Chicago.

Long story short....sail to O'Hare, no lines at Security, my First Class upgrade clears, and our flight backs out on time and we are in the air in no time flat. About an hour into the flight, things get interesting. The lead flight attendant gets a call on the cabin phone. She nods her head a couple of times and then calls the other flight attendants. About all I can hear her say is "everything locked up now." Umm...this is not good. She then snatches the meal trays from the three people that wanted the fruit plate and locked them up in no time. The Captain then comes on and announces (and I'm paraphrasing here), "Ladies and Gentlemen, we've developed a crack in windshield up here so we are diverting to Cleveland now. It's going to be a fast descent. Please remain seated with your seatbelts fastened."

Really? Ya' think? And descend we did. It was not your normal, leisurely, circuitous descent. This descent meant business. Kind of a take no prisoners approach to it. Fun? No, not really. Just as we came out of the descent is when the delightfully painful ear-popping fiesta began. Everyone started grabbing their ears or making those ridiculous facial gestures to get the ears back to normal (mine still aren't - FYI). The flight attendant in First Class quickly got up to make sure everyone had kept their seat belts on and she mentioned that they cockpit crew had been on their oxygen masks from the moment the crack was found and that they must have depressurized the plane when the ear-popping began.

I will tell you that I was thoroughly pleased when we landed in Cleveland and I hate that place. They at first said we should stay on the plane in case they fixed it. Yeah, right. I had no intention of doing that. Here's a picture of the plane with the baggage loader going right up to the window that was cracked. Who knew that a baggage loading belt was so versatile?


They cancelled the flight anyway. I spent about two hours in Cleveland trying to get a flight to NYC that could get me in on time but it was not to be. So I turned around and came back to Chicago and went into work. I'll tell you what...this had better not be a harbinger of how the rest of my year of traveling is going to be. I'm in no mood...