The bright side of the CrowdStrike air travel crisis

Opinion editor’s note: Star Tribune Opinion publishes a mix of national and local commentaries online and in print each day. To contribute, click here.

•••

Friday morning flight canceled. Scramble to find new flight. Booking site down. Hotel checkout looming. Now what?

It’s already old news, and yet it’s only been three weeks since I was stranded, along with hundreds of thousands of people across the globe, during the CrowdStrike outage. Looking back on it all, I’m struck by how, in the midst of so much travel hell, the main thing I took away from that time was a deep sense of humanity.

On Saturday, after my second canceled flight, I waited in line for 6 1/2 hours to get a new ticket. During that time, I met Emily. She was trying to get to a teachers’ conference in Orlando while her husband, Alex, and their two kids were trying to get home to Alabama. Just behind them, a woman, her parents and the most patient 3-year-old I’ve ever met were waiting to get a new flight to Connecticut. These were strangers who lived a thousand miles away from me, and yet in the moment it felt like making instant friends. By the end of the day, we all had new flights, high-fived and even took a selfie together.

At 3:30 a.m. on Sunday, I met Rob from La Crosse, Wis., while waiting to check in for my third flight. I was amazed that he didn’t even have a carry-on. Rob had attended the same work conference I had been at, so we passed the time comparing what we’d learned. After three hours of incremental departure delays, it seemed the flight might get canceled (spoiler alert: it did). But by now, I had started booking backups, so I was able to leave the gate to go to another plane. Rob wasn’t so lucky. I wished him good luck and left, feeling a bit guilty and wishing I could know when he would make it home, too.

While waiting for my fourth flight, I found an outlet to charge my phone. I realize now that, during the whole ordeal, I didn’t see anyone fighting over outlets, or really anything for that matter. On the contrary, I saw countless strangers watching bags or holding places for each other in line so solo travelers, like myself, could go refill a water bottle, take a restroom break or grab some much-needed food. Instead of drowning in helplessness, it seemed everyone’s instinct was to focus on helping others.

After a storm delay, my fourth flight finally took off. During a layover in Phoenix, I met Lisa, Jason and their kids from Des Moines. Their daughter is a published author (I ordered and can’t wait to read her book), and their son played basketball and, like me, did the long jump in track. Sitting and chatting with all of them, I felt like I’d been adopted. When we finally landed back in Minnesota at 2 a.m. on Monday, 2 1/2 days after my first canceled flight, I made sure to wave goodbye before getting off the plane.

Politics never came up in my conversations with all these people. It wasn’t because we were avoiding them. Instead, I think that in that environment, where our core sense of stability had been stripped away, ideologies simply didn’t matter. Who cares what your stance on a nebulous culture wars topic is when you don’t know if you’ll make it home or where you’re going to sleep later that night?

Beyond my fellow travelers, there were countless airline staff who did so much to help so many. After my third canceled flight, an incredibly kind bag agent helped me start a claim check so I could abandon my checked bag, which was still stuck on the plane I’d left. And then there was the shuttle driver who was formerly from Minnesota and entertained me with her plans to retire in seven years to Texas so she could be near her fiancé. These and more connections and kindnesses kept me together and got me home.

During 52 hours of travel hell, ideologies didn’t matter. Humanity mattered. As so many of us return to normal life, I hope that’s something we can hold on to. We have so much more in common than we realize.

John Nerge lives in Brooklyn Park.