Maybe forever. The worst part? I’m not going to get home tonight.

I was supposed to fly IAD-ATL-IAD-JFK today. I got up this morning too early and as I was about to head down to the lobby for a 7:00am shuttle to the airport, my phone rang. Crew tracking was letting me know that our IAD-ATL-IAD flight was “downgraded” to an ERJ because our CRJ was still broken. (We brought it in with some Maintenance deferrals which expired last night and needed to be fixed before the plane could be flown again.) Since I can’t fly an ERJ, this meant I could go back to bed and show up for the IAD-JFK portion of the flight.

I got to the airport at about 12:45. The flight was posted as delayed to 2:30pm. So I had time to get a sandwich at Potbelly Subs. I like Potbelly; I think they’re a Chicago thing, but it seems there’s one in the IAD airport. Previously, the only one I’d eaten at is in Midway.

It’s now 6:00pm. The plane is still not fixed. The weather has gotten bad enough that there’s a constant string of canceled flights and the line at the customer service counter is a few miles long. I’m starting to think that I’m not going to get out tonight at all, and even if I do, it looks like I’m not going to make it home tonight.

And that really stinks because this was my only break this month with 3 days off in a row.