Dallas snow storm = travel nightmare

I made it home.
This morning at 12:45am.

It had started snowing around 4 am and snowed all day long.  There really wasn't any let up at all during the day and evening.  I left client office about 4pm.  It took my regular 15 minutes to get to DFW though the snow was sticking to the roads.

My flight was still scheduled to fly and only 30 minutes delayed which meant 6:20 departure.  There were tons of flights being canceled and the airport itself wasn't all that bad.  There were long lines at the ticket counters but gates were not too bad.

I got upgraded to first class again and boarded the plane about 6pm.  Four passengers got on before a maintenance man showed up.  The pilot told us there was a leak in the front galley.  It wasn't just a drip like he has seen before but a real leak.  The maintenance man, Rick, walked on the plane and said, "Holy, shit!" -- Okay, that's not a good sign.

The water was streaming out of the coffee maker nozzle apparently.  A call went to the tower to have a maintenance truck sent over. Meanwhile a box of paper towels showed up and blankets were being gathered.

The truck showed up but only stayed a few minutes.  He had to go to an international flight.  Rick kept working on the leak though a few times he said into his radio that there might need to be an equipment change...which means getting off and finding another plane.

Rick got the leak under control then went down to check the black boxes in the avionics room below the cockpit.  If water got in there, then the plane would definitely have to be taken out of service.  He came back to report that no water had gotten in the avionics room.  However, water had gotten into the cockpit.

Another truck was paged over.  A wet vac was attached to the truck and water sucked up.  More blankets more paper towels.  Success.

Boarding started again and everyone got on by 7:20pm.  The pilot then announced that we had to wait for de-icing.  The DFW de-icing station was close to our gate so we would hang out at the gate until called over.  He estimated 1/2 hour.  Well, an hour later we pulled away from the gate to get in line.  And another hour later, we pulled into de-icing station and got de-iced.  It was still snowing.

So it is now 9:20 and we are de-iced.  And we wait.  and wait.  and wait.  At 10:10 we leave de-icing to get to runway.  So while we were sitting in the de-icing area, no other plane can be de-iced?!  I didn't understand that theory.

We got to the runway and took off at 10:20pm. I noticed that nothing had been plowed!  I can only assume that DFW doesn't have any snow removal equipment.  The runway had snow on it!

The temperature never got below freezing so the snow was slushy but there was still quite a bit of it.

We landed at 12:15am to a clear Minnesota winter morning.  I got home about 12:45am totally worn out and not feeling so great.