ORD

Sounds pretty awful, I have to admit. Can you claim anything back on travel insurance?

Compare to my day of flight hassles: 1550 check in at Belfast City airport for a flight to Zurich via Manchester. Discover bag cannot be checked through as travel agent has arranged 2 separate e-tickets, rather than a through ticket. Get a bit stressed as sure 50mins not long enough to make connection at Man. 1655 board plane, taxi out to runway, informed plane has technical difficulties, taxi back to stand and get off 1730 after queueing for ages, find out nothing BA can do as I've missed last Man -> zhr flight and they have no liability for onward e-ticket. 2015 check in for flight from Belfast Intl -> Gatwick (easyjet) having arranged 0715 flight to zurich from heathrow which requires getting up at 0500!! 2050 bag searched and swabbed for mass spec. As full of electronics (NB 2 flights to US in last week, 4 flight security points without a search) 2140 flight delayed due to snow 0040 (now) sitting on last FCC train from Gatwick to wrong london station, will have to walk home 30mins and get up in 3 hrs for taxi... To the Zurich flight...

And another thing... why is it impossible to get a decent Chicago-style pizza outside Chicago? Even Mr. McDodgy's Express Pizza here in terminal 3 does gorgeous butter-crust ones. You'd think with the ability of American chains to replicate identical food at will across the country, they'd have this sorted by now. Having said that, the pizzas AA do in flight can always be relied on to be surprisingly good. Grumble done. But the pizza was nice :)

Yeah, you're right. I'd just forgotten. I'm always more concerned about what happens if the incoming flight is delayed: I know in theory I should be able to palm the problem off onto AA, but I'm still the one who'll suffer if I have to catch the flight the next day :) The worry I had about baggage was whether the 23kg limit was shared between the two suitcases or not. I thought it was. AA's website was ambiguous. Their helpdesk declared not, but I was dubious. Whatever, they let me check them in. And I'm pretty certain they were under 32kg, so hopefully the handlers at Heathrow won't put their backs out - what are they doing handling them by hand these days anyway? No wonder they're always late.

You rarely need to leave too much time to connect at ORD onto AA as your incoming flight normally arrives in the same terminal as the international outbound. Of course a buffer for late arrival of the inbound flight is advisable, but at least you don't have to go through anything more than a short walk to get to your next gate. Unlike coming the other way of course where having to go through immigration, recheck baggage, get to terminal 3 then go through security again is a royal pain. I hope the baggage handlers at LHR agree to handle your bags if they are over 32kgs!!