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A bag of peanuts goes a long way.  Try 4. Delta, “the alternative airline” became my hero.  Yet that was only after I was re routed through United Airlines two times in one 24 hour period.  United Airlines has a lot of tricks in their bag but priority to Duluth, Minnesota is not one of them.  No reasonable excuse was given for cancelling my flight to Duluth on January 1, 2014 from O’Hare but my son and I garnered $35.00 in meal vouchers and scored a night at the Chicago Hilton.  If it’s a maintenance problem, you get that.  If not, find a seat…in the airport.  However, the problem was not so much missing one flight.  It was the fact that there were no more flights to Duluth, Minnesota until January 3.  Now I do believe that Duluth is the end of the earth.  My son and I sacrificed two $300 travel vouchers offered for delay while waiting in the Los Angeles Airport because my son did not want to wait.  Looking back, I would have traded my seat for one single palm nut.  Come to find out, we were only to relish our New Year in the high story Hilton.  When buying meals at Chicago O’Hare on vouchers, the merchants keep the change.  So if you buy a $7.00 mini-pizza and you give the merchant $10.00, you don’t get the $3.00 bucks back.  My level of frustration did not escalate until the next day.  I left my son in the hotel room because our makeshift flight on January 2nd that someone maneuvered for me was cancelled.  I stood at the counter an hour and then posed weak saying I was a diabetic.  I am a diabetic but I don’t use the diabetic card until I am really in a bind.  The customer service man said “Please have a seat and we will let you know when we solve your problem.”  I said “No. I am standing here until I faint.”  Then he went in the back 20 minutes and came out with two transfer flights to Duluth.  One was through Detroit with a connecting flight to Duluth.  The strange thing is, the airlines changed.  From Detroit, I was going to take Delta.  The other strange thing is the flight left in 45 minutes and my son was still in the hotel room.  “Go through Terminal E” he said.  My son and I raced to Terminal E and when we got to TSA, they said “wrong terminal.”  We had to race out of the airport to the tram which runs every 4 minutes to another terminal.  I found that part smooth.  When we got to the terminal, the foreigner in front of us could not successfully have her boarding ticket scanned from her smart phone.  America is so techy that people don’t want to bother with just printing out a boarding pass.  When we got to the gate, it changed 4 times in 2 hours with continued delays.  I went back to the United Airlines customer service counter and asked for lunch.  Why not?  The $35 in meal vouchers were long gone.  In fact, the Chicago Hilton cashed out our last $7 voucher with 4 mini dollar size pancakes and a glass of orange juice.  In Chicago terms, that is what $7 is worth.  I couldn’t afford the $20 buffet so I asked for a pro-rated dinner.  Four gates later, my son and I were enjoying a chef style Mexican tortilla.  The vouchers were issued.  After waiting 1 hour on the runway, we ascended to Detroit.  When we got there, we had to cross to terminal A via pedestrian bridge, take an outside shuttle that was 15 minutes late and race to the last gate in Terminal A.  A supervisor at TSA said we had one minute to get through.  She snatched our passports and did some high tail handiwork.  We arrived at Detroit at 7:50 and our flight left at 8:15 p.m.  I now commend the Chicago airport for its 4 minute trams.  Detroit was snowing just as hard and for people to have to stand outside in a blizzard and wait for a shuttle bus in 15 minute intervals was disheartening.  I have never been in that airport either.  After an O.J. style sprint through Terminal A, the Delta agent offered me water.  Our plane was in the runway another hour.  He gave my son 4 sacks of peanuts and pretzels and myself as well.  I sat next to an airplane mechanic from Duluth that was outsourced when Northwest Airlines closed.  He now commutes to Frankfurt, Germany for work.  In conclusion, United Airlines did the best they could but Delta did it better.  People may resent Delta for buying out Northwest, but they did offer excellent customer service and comfort in a time of distress.  When we were five miles from the Duluth airport, we saw green and blue wisps of the Northern Lights and that made all the delays worth it.  It gave me one degree of Northern pride going from an 80 degree climate to a minus 20 climate.  Next time, I am scheduling Christmas in July.