Rushing to get back to Chicago to see his daughter’s talent show and be home for his son’s birthday, one suburban dad’s journey home turned into a real planes, trains and automobiles story after his flight was stranded on a tarmac for hours Wednesday.
Alan Tuerkheimer was one of the many passengers on the United Flight that was left parked on a non-active runway Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey for nearly seven hours on Wednesday before the flight was ultimately canceled.
Tuerkheimer’s flight, UA661, pushed off the gate around 6:23 p.m. ET. Then, the waiting began. The plane taxied around before parking on the non-active runway. It wasn’t until 12:45 a.m. ET that the plane returned to a gate at the airport and the passengers were able to de-plane.
All Tuerkheimer said he got from the airline in exchange for the travel headache was a “$20 voucher to go get food from somewhere in the airport that wasn’t open.”
“They didn’t put us on another flight. They didn’t say we’re gonna leave first thing in the morning, didn’t offer us hotels. It was really minimal,” Tuerkheimer said. “They hung us out to dry.”
Determined to make it home, Tuerkheimer got creative.
He took an Uber to Newark Penn Station at 2 a.m., he said, and then jumped on an Amtrak train to Philadelphia. From there, he found a flight to Chicago.
Tuerkheimer said getting home to his family was “worth doing everything [he] did on minimal sleep.”
“I’m so happy he made it for my birthday,” said Jacob Tuerkheimer, Alan Tuerkheimer’s son who turns 12 years old on Friday. “It means a lot.”
United Airlines blames “severe weather impacting all airlines across the Northeast yesterday” for the long delays and cancellations.
Tuerkheimer, a frequent flyer, says the airline’s explanation doesn’t add up.
“There was a little bit of rain. I’m not a pilot but flown enough to know you can take off in the rain,” he said.
Tuerkheimer’s flight wasn’t the only United Flight that was left sitting for hours at Newark that day. At least one other flight, UAL 1197 flying from Newark to Denver, was also on the ground for seven hours.
