On American Flight 2013 to Orange County, Calif., which has been sitting on a taxiway for almost three hours, silent passengers peer out the lozenge-shaped windows while "I Love Lucy" reruns drone on the televisions overhead. In Terminal 1, water drips from the ceiling over Gate C27, pooling on the vinyl chairs below.
A gate agent looks up at the crash of thunder. "The angels are up there bowling," she says.
From the window of the American Airlines operations tower at O'Hare, where about 20 people coordinate the arrival and departure of the company's planes, comes a shout.
"Oh, did you see that?"
As everyone turns, another bolt of lightning snakes out of the dark clouds to the west.
"You saw lightning? Was it cloud to ground?" Dennis Quinn, the afternoon ramp manager, asks the employee next to him, who saw the strike.
She nods. He looks at the lightning monitor on the computer behind him and sees that a strike has hit the airport, dead center on the screen.
Within a matter of minutes, lightning will hit almost 150 more times in a 30-mile radius. One strike knocks out the airport radar that air traffic controllers use to see planes within a 55-mile circle of O'Hare, forcing the use of a backup system.
"Ladies and gentlemen, we are going to suspend the operation immediately," Quinn announces to the room.
He walks to the back of the tower and flips a switch that activates yellow strobe lights atop the tower. American Airlines has shut down.
The decision is, in one sense, symbolic; nothing is coming into or leaving O'Hare at this point, anyway. But it will protect the airline's outdoor workers, who must now come inside. And it is, more than anything else, an admission of defeat.
Quinn shakes his head. In the next 50 minutes, 3,369 passengers are supposed to arrive and leave on American planes. Then comes the evening rush.
"If you're going to have a thunderstorm come in and hurt you the worst, it's now," he says. "The flying day is destroyed at this point."
This would come as news to the people on the 60-some planes now jammed into almost every available space at the airfield: lined up on the taxiways, tucked behind the maintenance hangars and clustered around the water-retention pond known as Lake O'Hare.
These thousands of people still hope to get out of Chicago. They walk up and down the narrow aisles of their planes, trade paperback thrillers, play computer solitaire until their batteries run out and, if they are in first class, indulge in a few free drinks. Most of them remain calm and resigned. The weather, they think, tells them all they need to know.
What they don't know is that the airlines boarded them on the planes and will keep them there waiting, knowing there is very little chance they will leave in another hour, or even two.
Most of the airport's 171 gates are empty now, but the planes won't turn back because the airlines don't want to risk losing their place in line for takeoff when the weather clears.
Eventually, many of these flights will leave, but it will take some a painfully long time.
One American flight will wait four hours before it finally leaves for Kansas City, a delay so long that, as one official points out, the plane could have made two round trips in good weather.
Two United non-stops to Tokyo, among the airline's highest-profile and most profitable flights, also will sit on the taxiway for almost four hours, attracting the attention of United's chairman and chief executive, James Goodwin.
"You're not supposed to say that," he tells the workers who inform him of the delay, as he paces next to their desks in the operations center, hands in his pockets. "You're not supposed to say that."
If you live in a small city, there are many places in the United States you can't get to without going through Chicago because O'Hare is a major hub for the world's two largest airlines, United and American.
The hub-and-spoke system, which the airlines instituted in the early 1980s, is the main reason that someone who lives in, say, Duluth, Minn., can get to San Francisco at all. But it is also the reason that when O'Hare comes to a standstill, passengers throughout the country suffer.
Now, a half-dozen flights bound for Chicago are diverted to Denver where a pair of businesswomen decides to deal with the indefinite delay by retiring to the bar to make "contacts."
In Atlanta, two stranded co-workers sit on the floor, playing cards with a "Georgia Peach" deck they picked up in the terminal gift store.
In St. Louis, a nun fingers her rosary beads as she waits at a TWA gate, as serene as a statue amid the crumpled napkins, newspapers, grease-stained pizza box and half-full Starbucks cup littering the seats and floor around her.
"I think next time I'll fly Southwest," she says softly. "They seem to be more reliable."
Midway Airport, which Southwest Airlines uses to fly into and out of Chicago, also shuts down because of the storm and, in fact, will be under a national ground stop for all but 107 minutes of the next eight hours.
But, overall, the smaller airlines there, including Southwest, fare better today, largely because they don't use the hub-and-spoke system. They fly point to point, back and forth from one city to another, almost like a bus route.
In New York's LaGuardia Airport, the intercom crackles at Gate C9.
"May I have your attention please? May I have your attention please?" booms a voice. "United 667 has been canceled."
Some of the would-be passengers on the flight to Chicago, bunched into narrow rows of metal-framed seats, groan and throw their hands in the air.
Bob DeRosier, a tall, thin man in a green polo shirt, leaps from his chair and bounds toward the ticket counter.
"How are you folks even running an airline?" he exclaims to the ticket agent, clenching his fist and launching an invective that seems to voice the mounting frustration of the day.
"I can't believe you people. You have got to be kidding. Listen, I've had four flights in a row canceled by you people. The only thing that is going to teach you a lesson is when you go out of business."
The agent looks down and keeps typing at her computer, trying to rebook him on another flight.
"I can't believe this," he continues, shaking his head slowly. "I can't believe this."
Pilot Alan Sowell, who stands nearby waiting for his own flight, tries to placate him.
"It's been a rough summer, sir, I understand," the pilot says. He is referring to the season's record numbers of delays and cancellations, which were caused by bad weather and a labor dispute involving the refusal of United pilots to work overtime.
"But I wouldn't want to jeopardize myself or my passengers by trying to land in a thunderstorm."
"It's never you guys," replies the 45-year-old DeRosier, a banker from Schaumburg. "Don't you see? It's always something else, someone else's fault. Maybe it is the weather here, but the point is, you guys have lost all credibility. I feel no empathy or sympathy for anyone at United Airlines. You've delayed me enough."
"But sir," Sowell responds, "jumping up and down doesn't do anything to relieve the situation."
But, like much of what passengers are told today, this statement isn't strictly true. Passengers who complain about delays and cancellations sometimes get better service and more compensation than those who don't.
Three hours later, a United manager insists that a gate agent make room for two passengers on another flight to Chicago.
"Is that for the Irate?" the agent asks, apparently referring to DeRosier.
The manager doesn't respond. "I need two seats," he says. "Get them."
He subsequently escorts DeRosier and his daughter to the plane. Earlier, they had been told there wasn't room for them on the flight.
As thunder echoes outside Terminal 1, Betsy Moghadam wheels her double stroller the entire length of the C Concourse and back again. Past the luggage store. Past the sushi bar. Past the Cinnabon stand.
Her 2-year-old daughter, Macey, colors contentedly in the stroller's front seat. Four-month-old Mark plays with a set of colored rings in the back.
Sunday night, in her family's new home in Portland, Ore., Moghadam had packed her bags with the precision of someone planning a full-scale military assault—or a two-week visit to Grandma's house in Buffalo.
Two black suitcases, one blue diaper bag, one brown canvas carryall, one playpen, one car seat and the double stroller. In her carry-on bag, six diapers for Mark and three for Macey.
That was almost 18 hours, one connection, one canceled flight and one indefinite delay ago.
Traveling alone with two young children is hard enough when the schedule proceeds like clockwork, but a delay or two can spin the experience into a nightmare.
Already, Moghadam had to drop out of the line at the customer service counter so she could nurse Mark.
She decided not to switch airlines because it would mean leaving behind her luggage, with all the children's clothes and assorted gear.
It's as if the stroller, rolling along the floor, skates along the surface of a barely frozen pond. How much longer until Macey decides she's had enough? How many more diapers does she have left?
For now, though, the children remain calm and Moghadam pushes on, hopeful that her 2:58 p.m. flight will leave on time.
She rolls past the Cinnabon stand again.
I should pick up a few boxes of cinnamon rolls before the flight leaves, she says to herself. My mother will love them.
The pilot has a choice.
Either United Flight 882 from Tokyo to Chicago sits where it is, on the taxiway in Omaha, and 288 people spend the night in their seats, or he somehow finds a way through the storm-studded sky to O'Hare.
Ed Hopkins, a 35-year United veteran one flight shy of retirement, got his passengers within an hour of O'Hare before he had to divert to Omaha because there wasn't enough fuel left to hold in the air until the thunderstorms passed.
Now, he can't let the passengers off the plane because international flights can only disembark at airports that have U.S. customs agents.
After two hours at the gate and another two hours on the taxiway, Flight 882 has run smack into a deadline. If the plane doesn't take off within 30 minutes, Hopkins, his co-pilot and the flight's two relief pilots will hit the 19.5-hour limit their union contract allows them to remain on-duty.
All over the country, flight crews face variations of the same predicament, sitting on stranded planes or at crowded gates, helplessly watching their time run out. American Flight 2013, for instance, will wait for almost 5˝ hours at O'Hare before its passengers are sent back into the terminal because the crew has, as they put it, "gone illegal."
United's dispatch center in Elk Grove Township calls the air traffic controllers who run the Omaha airspace to try to get the plane out. An offer is made: The 747 can leave as a "pathfinder," which means it will have to pick its way through the storm using the plane's radar instead of guidance from the FAA.
In the plane, Hopkins will be able to see the weather on his radar equipment, but he won't see other planes very well. Because almost no one else is in the air, Hopkins decides it's safe to head up.
The thunderstorms are too intense for the plane to fly over, so Hopkins must fly around them, guiding the 232-foot jetliner through the fissures of calm air.There is some turbulence, but not much. What the passengers would remember about the flight are the four hours on the ground in Omaha, not the 60-some minutes in the air. The plane lands at O'Hare at 9:15 p.m.
Seven minutes later, the FAA once again tells every flight scheduled to leave anywhere in the country for O'Hare to stay on the ground.
On any given day at O'Hare, a Buddhist monk might share a bench with a Baptist minister, a CEO may wait at Starbucks next to a factory worker.
Or an accountant from Boston might cross paths with a stripper from North Carolina.
He is in a pinstriped suit. She is wearing a pink leotard and floral pants, tall, buxom and the winner of, among other distinctions, the Best Butt title in the Miss Nude Massachusetts contest.
They are both without their luggage, and, as they discover while chatting in line to try to recover it, both are trying to get to Milwaukee. Twenty-six-year-old Peter Pellegrino plans to look at the accounting records of a company being purchased by one of his clients. Jami Lydolph, who uses the professional name Lucy L'Vette, has an 8 p.m. performance at a club called On the Border.
It does not take long for them to reach an agreement. Why not share the cost of a rental car? She goes to get the vehicle. He waits for the bags.
"I've only had about one or two hours of billable time today," Pellegrino says, the trace of a grin stretching his lips, "but it's been a productive day for me. A real productive day."
Speaking in low, tense voices, arms crossed, Erik and Tonya Madsen try to decide what to do while Jacob fusses in his stroller. There are no more flights to Ft. Wayne today.
After trekking back to the American gate yet again, they are told that since all the flights are grounded because of the weather, the airline can't offer any reimbursement, although the gate agent does hand over $20 worth of food vouchers. With a flourish, Erik produces the tickets from the family's first flight, which was canceled because of "mechanical problems."
That's the magic phrase. Airlines usually won't provide free hotel rooms for people stranded by weather-related delays, but they will pay when the problem is deemed the airline's fault. Now, the Madsens are eligible for a free room at the Days Inn in Elgin.
Then, the Madsens will have to return Tuesday morning for a 7:30 flight to Ft. Wayne.
"That one's going to go for sure," the agent tells them.
So, pushing Jacob in his stroller, Tonya and Erik stand in another line to reclaim their luggage so they can take it to the hotel.
There, another passenger tells them that American has chartered a bus for Ft. Wayne, which is about to leave.
In the family's four trips between the United and American gates, covering a distance that now totals 2.6 miles, not including their detours to baggage claim and elsewhere, no one has conveyed this piece of information to them.
Abandoning their bags, they race to the parking lot—diaper bag flying behind them, the baby's blanket flapping off Tonya's shoulder—and board the bus. It leaves less than a minute later, at 6:08 p.m., pulling away from the curb beneath rainy skies.
The Madsens will arrive in Ft. Wayne at 10:15 p.m., having exhausted 12 hours to make a trip that usually would have taken 45 minutes. The 7:30 a.m. Tuesday flight the gate agent assured them would leave will be canceled.
As the Madsens make their escape, the airport's radar screens show a horseshoe of weather beginning to choke O'Hare. A second line of thunderstorms, which, at dawn, appeared as nothing more than a wispy pair of clouds over Montana, has steamrolled into a solid wall of thunder, lightning and stinging rain.
The only way in or out now is from the south. Trying to push all the backed-up planes in and out of that opening is like squeezing the Eisenhower Expressway to a single lane at rush hour. More ground stops have slowed arrivals again, and now the airlines and air traffic controllers know they have two hours at most before the airport shuts down again.
The airlines aren't focusing on today's passengers anymore. They're thinking about the people who need to fly tomorrow. The storms sent dozens of flights to places they're not supposed to be and the airlines need to get these diverted planes, their passengers and flight crews back in place if they have any chance of recovering from today's disaster.
At United's headquarters, a supervisor orders $700 of pizza. At American's operations center in Dallas, a supervisor throws in the towel. "If it's not a diversion," he tells his workers, "cancel it."