A personal story of finding grace in the chaos and really feeling lucky when things go upside down.

I’ve been on my fair share of delayed/cancelled flights.
I’ve spent hours at airports all over the world, pacing from one gate to another, watching the departure board turn into a list of disappointments.

But this past week? This was something else.

Toronto Pearson was a mess.
Flights were backed up for hours because of two record-snow storms.
Many more were cancelled.
People were stranded, exhausted, frustrated.
And I was right there in the middle of it (heading from my home, in Montreal, to San Diego for MMT)… And felt a sense of peace compared to what others were going through.

From cancelled flights and delay to then learning that a Delta flight from Minneapolis had crashed upon landing.

The plane flipped upside down on the tarmac.
Fire. Smoke. Emergency crews racing to the scene.
Somehow, everyone (thankfully) survived.
And the impact on the airport was immediate.
Many runways shut down.
All planes returned to the gate and had the passengers deplaned.
All inbound flights were diverted (or cancelled).
Flights delayed even further.
Many more were cancelled.
Even leaving the airport wasn’t easy… all hotels, car rentals, taxi lines and more encountered snaking lines with hundreds of people trying to figure it all out.

You start to realize how fragile air travel is when not dealing with two massive challenges (the crash and the storm)… and then something like this happens.

A single runway closure sends ripple effects across the system.
A delay in one city means a missed connection in another.
And when the industry is already running at full capacity, there’s no room for error.

It was a perfect storm of everything that could go wrong.

But there’s much more to this story… including a 30 hour-plus no sleep personal experience that never ended in San Diego at MMT, but back home… and not everyone was so lucky or feeling so thankful.

This is what Elias Makos and I discussed on CJAD 800 AM. Listen in right here.

Before you go… ThinkersOne is a new way for organizations to buy bite-sized and personalized thought leadership video content (live and recorded) from the best Thinkers in the world. If you’re looking to add excitement and big smarts to your meetings, corporate events, company off-sites, “lunch & learns” and beyond, check it out.