I wasn’t going to post anything about my travel woes to Ottawa, ON for BSDCan 2014, but upon receiving the revised itinerary after the 3rd flight cancellation, I decided it was too humorous to pass up…

Originally scheduled to fly out on Wednesday via United, I arrived at the airport, parked my vehicle, removed my bags, and proceeded to walk to the main terminal. My phone vibrated while walking to United’s check-in counters…I just received a flight cancellation notice citing “severe weather conditions in our route network” despite there being little weather in the areas of Dulles and Ottawa that day. A United representative rescheduled the flight the following morning which was subsequently cancelled for the same reason…still no real weather to be seen, but there was certainly weather on the way for Thursday evening into Friday.

I contacted the travel agent following the 2nd cancellation and discussed two options; A connecting flight with a 4 hour layover that day which ended up being cancelled or a non-stop flight Friday morning. Seeing as how the total time on the former flight would have been 8 – 10 hours, I opted for the latter, shorter, 1.5 hour flight Friday morning, just in time to attend most of BSDCan’s main conference activities.

I awoke Friday morning to a deluge of rain thinking the flight would certainly be cancelled, but the flight status, according to United, was “on schedule”. I got up and continued my daily morning routine intending to make the drive to the airport while checking the phone periodically for flight status updates. The phone vibrated as I was preparing to leave home with an email update that the flight was cancelled. It was the cancellation I had been expecting so, instead of driving to the airport, I continued into the office.

Shortly after arriving at the office, I received an email from United with the revised itinerary:

The irony in the revised itinerary is two-fold in that I depart Dulles to Ottawa on the same plane I was originally scheduled to return to Dulles from Ottawa on and that United thinks it’s ok for me to fly from Dulles to Ottawa, stay on the plane, and fly back to Dulles approximately 30 minutes later.