Your Worst Flight Delay?

12 hours….

In Portugals Faro airport the Monarch 757 that was due in ran into a gantry at Gatwick, so they had to wait for the flight that left Faro before ours to get home, load up with the passengers that were delayed at Gatwick and then fly out to us.

Worst delay I’ve ever had personally was about 4 or 5 hours at GLA in January 98, becuase of high winds at LHR, and consequently several runways being shut. Our British Midland 737 was only just leaving GLA when we reached the lounge on it’s previous rotation. Got into LHR to discover our connecting flight to ZRH had just left (it too was about 3 hours late), ended up getting put up at the Sheraton in Hounslow (or Windsor, somehere like that, anyway), and got the 7am BD flight next morning (so we couldn’t even really enjoy the hotel…:() And I was a day late for my skiing trip [with Swiss school], too… 😡

Strangest reason for a delay was probably being loaded onto a US Airways 757 at PIT, and then the captain telling us we’d be delayed as the bathroom light bulb needed changed… :rolleyes:

I can imagine how annoying that could of been, I doubt you wre hungry after your cold chicken, mushed up rice and water… :p

Sounds very eventful!

14 1/2 hors for me!!! This was back in August 1996 so I was 10 years old – I remember it very well.

Flight was Saturday morning flight from Alicante, Spain to London Gatwick with Caledonian Airways. Seeing as this was a TriStar flight, 400 passengers were to be on this flight. First of all, we arrive at Alicante 2 hours before take off when we find 2 check in desks for 400 people – you can imagine how long the que was!!! It was soooo long that most of the passengers had to stand outside as the terminal was so small then – not very nice in 90 degree heat with high humidity!

After an hour we get to the check in desk to see a stupid piece of paper saying : Flight CKT??? delayed 11 hours due to gone tech! (Most of the passengers didnt not understand what gone tech meant! That is all that bit of paper said.) Seeing as the check in agents were Spanish with little english, there was no help, until a holiday rep came along and literally 400 people ran up to him wanting to find out what was wrong! he must have been petrified! Thankfully some more reps came up. Once checked in, we were given a meal of Cold Chicken and Rice, Runny Chocolate Custard and a cup of water – AND THAT WAS IT!!!! . Seeing as this was 1996 – there wasnt much activity compared to how it is now. After 11 hours we found out that the plane only had a minor techinical fault but we had to wait while the plane flew LGW-Larnaca,Cyprus, Larnaca to Gatwick, Gatwick to Alicante!!! After about 12 hours everyone was getting ratty and then were about 20 kids all together running round screaming – one angry women told these 2 little boys to f*** off!!! Not the best choice of words for youngsters!!!!

Finally after 14 hours our plane landed and we took off 30 minuites later. Crew were “sorry” and gave us cards to write out for compensation – we got £35 for each person in the end!!!! So generous! Then to annoy us even more, they kept waking us up for food when we were all trying to sleep!

Lets just say that was a memorable trip 😉

Regards
dan777

Last summer, I flew SIA from AMS to SYD via SIN, and I was looking forward to my 2 hour and 45 minute layover in SIN so I could go into the lounge and have a shower and relax after a 13 hour flight. Well, after boarding we were informed the long runway was not in use and being a very heavy and long flight, we would either have to unload some cargo or request special permission from the airport to use the runway. 2 hours later, we took off. So much for my layover, which was down to about 45 minutes and only had enough time to pretty much get off the plane, go to the bathroom, and walk across the very large SIN terminal to get to my connecting flight.

When we went to New York last year, it seemed to good to be true that we had landed 50 minutes early. So upon arrival at Heathrow, we parked up somewhere and waited… and waited… and waited… until about an hour later we went to the gate because an American Airlines 777 was departing late and we had arrived early – not the best situation! With it being 8:00pm at night in November, there’s not much to see, plus the windows were steamed up!

Ariana Afghan…very interestin…well not ur trip:D …but still.

THe worst delay I had was when I was 6. We were flying to India on Ariana Afgan routing
london-prague-moscow-kabul-tashkent-delhi

BAD MISTAKE
WE were stopped at Tashkent due to bad weather. There was no food and baby sister was sick. WE were stranded there for 20 hours with no food or hotels. This is why i remeber it so well

4 hours at Gatwick waiting for our Virgin Atlantic 747-200 flight to Barbados. I’ve also had a 4 hour wait at Barcelona for our Iberia flight, but frankly I can think of worst places to be stuck.

T5, I had a delay at Montego Bay airport, as well a few years back. Not nearly as long as yours, but a delay nonetheless. I don’t remember what the reasoning was, but we were sitting in the airplane for a good 2 hours before we took off. Inside the terminal, it wasn’t very “user friendly,” to say the least. The facilities were definitely lacking, so it’s a good thing you took your scrabble. I just recall there being no organization to the ques. Just a bunch of people squeezing in to the checkout desks. That’s how it was for Air Jamaica, at least. That being the hometown carrier, was pretty brutal on their part, to say the least. Probably the silliest reason I ever had for a delay, was when I flew Air Cananda from Montreal to Denver, we were delayed about 45 minutes because, “the wrong meals were loaded.” I started laughing. They had to unload the wrong meals and load the correct ones. I thought I had heard it all.

12 hours

Per – Sin Qantas

well it wasnt Qantas’ fault, ATC decided to go on strike due to pay and work conditions.

its an frequent occurance in Perth, strikes last 4 – 8 hours a time.

1997.

BY 767

PALMA-GATWICK

Flight was delayed 4 hours, due to having to wait for two passengers. Waited an hour until they were eventually found, but by the time that they were the flight had missed its slot.

Half an hour later the captain came on the tanoy and said that we were going to ba able to take of in 15 minutes, but this was to no aveil, due to the heavy load of other traffic entering the airport.

2 and a half hours into waiting the plane was moved to a remote loaction in the airport grounds where we continued to wait, felt as though there was a bomb on board and we had been moved away from the terminal!

By the 3:15 mark we tried again to take off but were once again told to come back due problem with the left side engine… nothing major. We refulled, because of the amount of taxiing we did around Palma airport.

Eventually we were given a slot, just over 4 hours later than we should have been, we were on our way home.

But it didn’t stop there… oh no! Upon landing at LGW, we were told there were no spaces for our plane to pull in and unload at, so the plane was placed at the far end of the airport, just in front of the control tower, and thats where we were off loaded, onto buses. We had to wait a fair while for the luggage to come through, as it had to come from further away than normal!

What a disaster of a flight home that was! 🙁

I flew LHR-BAH once in the mid 1980’s, with Gulf Air.

We took off on time, but the aircraft malfunctioned and diverted to CAI. We stayed in Cairo 48 hours until the aircraft was fixed!

First 8 hours, the bloody Egyptinans wouldn’t let us disembark as we didn’t have prepaid Egyptian visas!! When the babies started getting ill from the heat (no air conditioning, limited water) they relented and allowed us off. GF very apologetic, nothing they could do about the beaurocrats, put us up in a 5 star hotel until a replacement L1011 came in to continue our journey. Flew back BAH-LHR 6 months later and was upgraded to First.

My worst delays have always been with Airtours.

EMA-ACE 6 hours
ACE-EMA Not delay but unscheduled stop in Nantes

But the worst was an 11 hour delay flying MAN-MLA. Annoying thing is that they kept telling us it would be 2 hours blah, blah, blah. The aircraft (ex Excalibur A320, I’m pretty sure) went tech in Cyprus I think, so it was bloody obvious it would be longer than 2 hours!
The 11 hour delay was only as short because our party kicked up a fuss and they put us on a Britannia flight that went out on time! Don’t know what the others eventually flew out on a few hours later.

Bit of a surprise I ever wanted to fly with them again, but I just got back with them today, ontime departing and early arriving on both flights, so maybe they’ve improved!