Any chance Flight Aware can put together a traffic loop of a normal Friday at MDY and what happened today? Running at high speed (time lapse) just to show the traffic snarl. About ten years ago you did when Memphis got hit by thunderstorms in the night when FedEx lost billions of dollars of business when all their traffic had to divert.
Forget KMDW. Look at all of ZAU if you want to see the chaos. It would be fun to see how traffic between KMDW, KRFD, KORD, KMKE, KPIA, and KCMI.
Last time something like this happened, I was diverted to Omaha… which was okay, because my parents live there, but there was no space left on the ramp after numbers of flights diverted.
What I don’t understand here, though… is why appropriate LOAs weren’t put to use. When wildfires forced ZLA to evacuate, the LOAs they had in place with ZOA and ZAB had those two ARTCCs extend their airspace laterally to cover the airspace, while SCT still operated as normal.
ZID, ZMP, and ZKC could have extended their airspace to cover, but I wonder if they had any such LOAs in place.
BL.
LOL… way to flex the TLA and FLA muscles…