Flying to Ontario, California

I had to visit a customer site to solve a problem with my software.

When arranging my flight, it appeared I could book a flight on Northwest out of Pellston, but my company's travel department couldn't book me a seat. So instead, I was sent out of Pellston on United. On the surface, it appeared better travel arrangement, as there was only one stop (in Denver), as United recently added the Traverse City (TVC) to Denver (DEN) leg as a non-stop flight.

However, our flight was a bit out of the ordinary, as not long after we reached cruising altitude, the pilot indicated he was shutting down the left engine due to excessive vibration. After a discussion with Corporate, they decided to divert to Minneapolis, where we had an 'interesting' high-speed landing, what with 3 fire trucks lined up to meet us. After that, the plane load of passengers spent a couple hours (mostly in line trying to rebook flights).

While we were doing that, the pilot had the engine examined, took it for a spin around the tarmac, and pronounced everything OK, blaming the vibration on the fins not fully sliding to their outward position upon engine start. So about 50% of the people that landed in Minnesota took off in the same plane.

Ninety minutes later we were in Denver, and had lost about 3 hours on our schedule.