These Are Your Most Infuriating Flight Delay Horror Stories

Ooh Just had one a couple months ago.

Comapny Needs me to fly out to Tel Aviv for a week. So the travel agent gets me a night flight from Denver to To Newark. The flight lands early in Newark. we are happy things are going well. Well we landed too early, there is no gate for us, so we must wait on the runways until a gate opens. - thats ok i still have 1 hour till my connection to Tel Aviv.

We wait and we wait - we roll forward, but now some other plane that was backing out of a gate broke down, needs repair. now we are stuck between two gates. Its ok, i still have like 1/2 hour to get to the connection.

1/2 later - i have heard they will hold the Tel Aviv flight for us on the connection. The flight attendants ask all the passengers to let us international connection people off first. but since we have been on a runway parked for 1.5 hours. NO ONE LISTENS, so now i am nearly the last off my plane and running to the connection gate - which in Newark—- is ages away.

Me and 5 other people got to the connection gate just in time to see our plane rolling out and leaving us. Sweet

So now i get to wait in a 1.5 hour line to talk to United customer service about a new flight. I havent eaten or had water now for 6 hours. I finally get my turn. I am told the next flight i can get on is the next afternoon out of JFK. I am given a hotel voucher for a hotel in... wait for it LONG ISALND. And a Lyft credit. Its now 1 Am and My lyft credit turnd out to for a trip from JFK to Newark not the other way round, so i cant use it. Now its 2AM and I am NOT getting a 100$ cab to Long island to sleep for 3 hours. Also I dont have my bags back yet.

I finally get my bags by 3 AM and decide to sleep on the airport floor at Newark. At 5 AM they wake us up like a bunch of hobos and tell us to move on. I finally get my cab to JFK , and wait outside security there for over 8 hours to make my flight. Finally get some food and water feeling a bit better.

The new flight takes me first to Zurich - when I land in Zurich I find out that Israel is in upheaval over some political stuff - its getting bad and they are closing airports. I am so lucky Zurich has an In-Airport micro hotel - I am am to sleep for 3 hours in a bed before i got the last flight into Tel Aviv..

FUck man

Suggested by: the_AUGHT

I have two.

The first was close to 30 years ago. O’Hare to Newark on Northwest. Connection out of Detroit was cancelled, so they flew us the wrong way to try to catch a connecting flight out of Minneapolis... where there was a blizzard. I think we spent 14 hours at the airport in Minneapolis. They did give us some food vouchers, so we didn’t starve.

The second, and more recent was a flight out of Little Rock heading to O’Hare. Original flight was for 10 am. By the time we got to the airport, it had been bumped to noon. Delay after delay, followed by cancellations and re-bookings... We finally get a seat on a 10 pm flight... then the storm came. Flight cancelled. They tried to tell us that since it was weather related they didn’t have to put us up in a hotel. I (as calmly as I could under the circumstances) explained that the flight that got cancelled due to weather was not our original flight. That flight getting cancelled might have been an “act of God”, but us being on that flight was an act of American Airlines. They did relent and get us a room. The room was nice, even though we didn’t have much time to appreciate it. We got to the hotel at midnight, and our new flight was scheduled for 6 am.

Suggested by: smalleyxb122

Flying on one of those budget airlines from Victoria BC to Edmonton Alberta. There was, apparently, one plane crisscrossing the country and delays out east began to add up. By the time our supposed late afternoon departure time had arrived, the plane was till somewhere in Ontario. I think we had close to an 8 hour wait in a small airport where everything (and there wasn’t much to begin with) was closed.

Suggested by: TheWalrus

I too have a miserable “going to a wedding” story. About 10 years ago a friend of mine decided to get married and have the wedding in Mexico about an hour outside of Cancun.

So I book my flight through Aeromexico. The trip was to fly from Oakland CA to Mexico City. And from there to Cancun where a van from the place we were staying would pick me up. Before I continue let me mention that I had

A: Forgotten to bring the address of where I was staying because I assumed well... the driver of the van knows anyway

B: Did not realize my cell phone would not work in Mexico

Anyway, first leg of the journey was nice. The plane was a brand new 787 Dreamliner and was very comfortable. We land in Mexico city at around 7:30PM. From there I needed to go through customs. The line was huge. By the time I get through it I had missed the flight. So I would need to book another ticket. I go to the Aeromexico counter. They are closed. Apparently they closed their counter at 9:00PM. So I had no way to book another flight. It also occurred to me that I was not going to be able to get to where I was supposed to go because the guy with the van was no longer going to be there. I also had left the address behind. So I decided to call my wife to get the address from the piece of paper I had written it down on at my desk. Except my cell phone doesn’t work. So I decided to go use a pay phone. I have no Mexican money so I went to one of the shops, bought a phone card and dialed up my wife. The connection super flakey and the call dropped several times. I could barely understand my wife. And apparently addresses in Mexico are super long. I had her repeat it several times. Hoping it was right I hung up and went to the Delta Airlines terminal, booked a flight and left some 5 hours after I was supposed to.

I land in Cancun. There is a huge line of Taxis. I hail one and luckily the driver speaks English. I hand him the address and hope it looks understandable. We drive and eventually pull off and down a narrow, unpaved gravel and sand road. This road goes on for miles. I sure as fucking hope this is the right address. We come to a large house and there is a foot of water in the driveway with a warning sign in Spanish with a picture of what looks like an Alligator ( turns out they were Caymens. I knock on the door and thank god its my friends.

An hour later the cab driver returns. I had left my passport in the car. So I wound up paying him an additional trip and a tip. That left me with $100 for the week. The only “good” thing was that since we were far away from Cancun, the prices for everything was dirt cheap so that $100 lasted me the rest of the trip.

Suggested by: ROBOT TURDS

Flying through Atlanta in June 2003 to go to my brother’s wedding. Evening flight from Philly delayed 3 hours for weather in ATL. The crew is informed of a window of opportunity so we head to the tarmac only to have the delay last for an additional 90 minutes which times the crew out. Return to gate, get new crew, return to tarmac, sit for another 90 minutes as we missed our window in ATL. So we’re now 6 hours behind our arrival in ATL if you’re keeping score at home. The passengers are getting restless and wondering when we will finally take off, only to realize the crew is nowhere to be seen. More bad news incoming; this new crew has also now timed out. We return to gate once more, get a new crew and are airborne within the hour. We arrive at ATL just after 3 AM. Whilst in the air, my connecting flight to my destination was booked for me on the 7AM flight. So I get off the plane and am informed there are no hotels still available due to the number of stranded passengers in ATL and our late arrival, but that the one hotel that might have space is an hour away.

So their solution was I could travel the hour to the hotel (plus time to get to the shuttle in Hartsfield-Jackson) to then have to be back in time for a flight that would need me there 90 minutes ahead of time for the gate, factoring the hour in for my return trip, I had about 10-15 minutes to sleep in a hotel provided check-in went smoothly, or I could, tuxedo in hand, sleep in the terminal for 2-3 hours.

I got the gate number for the 7AM flight and went and slept behind the counter where I was rudely awakened 2 hours later by an employee asking me “WTF do you think you’re doing?!” I didn’t have it in me to retort with anything clever so I simply moved to a seat and was able to arrive before noon to the pre-wedding errands.

That was the worst of my 3 times I’ve had to sleep in Hartsfield-Jackson, you’d think I’d stop flying through there, but for my travel needs that’s easier said than done.

There is nothing worse than spending 4+ hours sitting on the tarmac with the air-con running at low pressure in the June heat and humidity.

Fly Delta they said...

Suggested by: PotbellyJoe and 42 others

I had a fun one last summer. I’d gone to the UK and done a whisky tour through Islay. I’d left extra room in my *checked* bag to bring back some liquid treasures. On the way back, while in the Edinburgh airport, I foolishly picked up one more bottle at the Duty Free. Paid for it, got it labeled, sealed, the whole bit. Flew off to our connection in Toronto. This is where things take a turn.

Unlike virtually everywhere else on earth, flights from Toronto go through an extra layer of airport security, so you do another TSA-type lineup between planes. You also go through customs on the Canadian side, rather than on the US side.

The people in that security line treated my Duty Free whisky like weapons-grade heroin. I was stopped, my bag was searched, my stuff (sealed whisky included) was opened up. I was practically strip-searched right out in the open with everyone looking at me. I hope they appreciated the fact that I shaved my balls that morning, because a lot of bystanders were able to appreciate my attention to personal grooming (kids included!). They also took my checked bag out of the system to search it as well, which leads to the next quirk of the Toronto-US connection.

After the security line, you sit in a holding pen waiting for your name to come up on a screen, and then you can actually go to your gate. Your name shows up when your luggage has arrived at the gate. So between being stopped at the screening table to have my junk examined and then waiting for the rest of my stuff to be searched, we missed our flight. And they opened all my whisky, some of which were supposed to be given as gifts.

Fuck you, Toronto Airport.

Suggested by: Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death

Coming home from Rome on March 14th, 2008...

We got to FCO in Rome and we should have flown to Heathrow > NYC > DSM, that didn’t happen.

On March 14th, 2008 Heathrow Terminal 5 opened, Queen Elizabeth II was there to dedicate it, this caused delays for flights in/out of Heathrow that day including ours. When we finally landed we had something like 10mins to get from the terminal we landed at to the terminal our flight was leaving from, we missed the flight.

Went to the airline counter and asked what our options were. Ultimately the best option was to get on a bus to Gatwick, spend the night and then fly out the next day via Atlanta. 2hr bus ride later we get to Gatwick, airline put us up for the night and gave us food vouchers but we got to the hotel at something like 2am so there was nothing open but a snack counter, dined on candy bars and chips.

Next morning we get to Gatwick. Gatwick had different rules for what is allowed for carryons so we all had to mad scramble to stuff bags into bags to clear security. Ok, all done, get on a plane Atlanta bound...

March 14-15th 2008 an F2 tornado ripped through ATL with 24 total tornados reported in the area. While we were able to successfully land we couldn’t deplane due to lightning. Something like 4hrs later we rolled up to the gate and got off the plane. We missed our connection.

At this point I don’t recall how long we waited but it was around 12 more hours in ATL before we were able to get on another plane bound for DSM. Once we finally got home it was no surprise that our luggage did not make it. Everyone in our group finally got all of their luggage but some of it took close to a month to finally route home.

It’s not a complete Planes/Trains/Automobiles but we did have the Queen/Bus/Tornado!

Suggested by: RCook

Just this past Monday! Flying Wilmington, NC to Columbus, OH, connection it LaGuardia. Get to LaGuardia fine, meet connecting flight, roll out and then sit on the tarmac ‘15th in line for take-off’ for 2 hours waiting for a window to escape my new hell.

Sent back to the terminal and wait two more hours waiting on the pilot to get a green light to go... he’s from Columbus and highly motivated to get moving as well but has a hard out at 11:30 PM due to their duty cycle. 8 PM, we get a window, we all get back on the plane, and then sit in line again for two hours. Finally, pilot’s time runs out, flight’s cancelled.

Weather, not Delta’s fault, no perks... at all.

It’s now Midnight so the customer service line isn’t long and there’s 5 agents deployed to take care of us all (Yay Delta!). Next flight to Columbus with a seat wasn’t until Wednesday evening and they refused to route me to Atlanta and get me on an American flight to Columbus the following morning. Took a seat on a flight to Cincinnati for 10 AM the next day but it’s out of Newark.

Do I stay at LaGuardia and Uber to Newark in the AM? Nope, $120 Uber ride to Newark to find a sea of humanity sprawled out everywhere trying to get some sleep. I curl up on a Starbuck’s booth (that someone had kinda broken into) and try to get some sleep... nah, there’s pop music playing loudly for no discernable reason so at 4:30 AM, I hit the head and brush my teeth. On my way back, I notice that TSA was just opening so breezed through there, found a cup of coffee and screwed around on my phone for 6 more hours.

Get into town, get a ride to the office and I look/feel/smell perfectly homeless. Car is in Columbus and my Uber receipt ended up being $185 because of tolls and a $20 bridge ride to New Jersey... not even a kiss!

Suggested by: Renescent

Duct Tape.

2009 flying from Philadelphia to Salt Lake City.

There was so much traffic going into Philly that we arrived at the terminal 43 minutes before our flight, but the checked baggage cutoff was 45 minutes. They made us pay to reschedule our Philly->SLC direct flight to a later flight, which now had to connect through Minneapolis.

Then once on the flight, the overhead compartment a couple rows behind us wouldn’t shut, so the flight attendant called maintenance. It took them almost an hour to get on the plane, and their solution was to literally duct tape the overhead compartment closed.

Since we took off an hour late, by the time we landed in Minneapolis, our connecting flight had already taken off, and it was the last one out for the day. They booked us on a new flight the next day for free, and booked us a nearby hotel. However, they wouldn’t let us have our checked baggage and instead sent us off with a plastic bag containing a toothbrush and a white t-shirt to stay the night. Note that the bag did not contain clean underwear, deodorant, etc.

The plane stuff the next morning went smooth and they had upgraded 1st class ticket. However since we arrived a day late, it caused some problems with the rental car in SLC and also the hotel reservation in Wyoming that we were driving to.

Suggested by: StalePhish

Got stuck in DFW overnight due to my co-worker getting drunk in the lounge and being refused boarding.

I thought it best not to leave a drunk 5'2" 120 lb woman alone at a strange airport, so i stayed with her. Even in the middle of the night, an airline terminal is a busy place, so trying to sleep was impossible.

Fortunately we made the first flight out the next morning, but she was extremely hung over and almost got bumped from that flight as well.

Suggested by: Earthbound Misfit I

My three bad flight delay stories are bad not because of the effects (yes, I was caught up in Southwest’s Christmas nightmare, so I’ll let others share theirs), but because of their sheer asininity.

1) A mechanical delay because the co-pilot’s seat belt wouldn’t buckle

2) A mechanical delay because a plastic grocery bag blew into the engine fan overnight, so they decided to remove the entire cowling to make sure that there weren’t any other scraps hanging around.

3) Some fuckstick was exposed to Covid, got a test, then continued to show up to work at the Air Traffic Control center, only informing their coworkers AFTER their test results came back positive, shutting down the entire Dallas-Fort Worth airspace so that the FAA building could be sanitized.

Suggested by: Cayde-6's Unloaded Dice

United Airlines. Right... you know this is going to be a shitshow. Boise to Columbia, SC one stop in the dreaded Chicago (ORD). Flight leaves then circles around ORD and can’t land because of weather then runs out of gas and has to land in Peoria. Like some poor person airline that only puts $5 worth of gas in their car at a time. 2 hours 50 minutes on the ground, 10 minutes short of when they have to let us out of the plane they leave. I will not detail the part about accusing the flight attendant of lying because I knew full well that plane can de-plane in Peoria. Back to ORD, no flights until next evening. I have to teach a class the next morning. Into a cab to Midway Airport, Southwest to Charleston, rent a car at 11 PM, drive to Columbia, show up without my clothes, teach a class to a bunch of lawyers with a borrowed suitcoat, my jeans and a tee shirt looking like a Serbian gangster.

TLDR; walk before you get on United, but if you do, never ever even think of landing at ORD or DEN for that matter.

Suggested by: TheBlightOfGrey

When I flew to India there was a big delay with my initial flight that caused me to miss my connection and it got changed up a bunch. As a result, my luggage never followed the new flight path and it took about 2 weeks to find out it was stuck in London, so I ended up buying a bunch of clothes while in India since I was there for a month with nothing but the 2 outfits I arrived with. I had zero delay issues flying back, but somehow my luggage ended up stuck in London again, resulting in another fight to get my stuff home. In the end, 2 brand new suitcases were severely damaged from this 1 trip. I’m not sure how they got so many holes & tears in them, especially since I still own the carry-on piece of the set some 12 years later and it has held up fine to all kinds of uses.

Suggested by: engineerthefuture

Probably this week. A 90 minute flight on Tuesday became a 4 leg, 37 hour journey. Flight delayed the allowed 7 hours, cancelled last minute when no alternatives were available, overnight in one airport, 3 standby attempts to fly to another city where I could take Amtrak home. Third attempt to connect left me stranded half way in between with an aircraft mechanical issue. Fifth attempt got me to my train but without my luggage. American Airlines has been nothing but trouble. I’ll only fly Delta from now on.

Suggested by: something something vape joke

My time to shine:

In October of 2018, I had an American Airlines flight from Austin TX to Philadelphia for work following the F1 race weekend. 7 AM flight, boarded as normal and we were waiting to take off when the pilot comes over the intercom and says that they failed the pre-flight check list due to “an extinguisher being slightly below psi range” and they were going to try some fixes to get it into operating range. Fast forward an hour of waiting on the plane at the gate, and the pilot finally said they were unable to get it in range, and therefore, they needed us to de-board and the flight would be delayed until they could get a replacement. Easy enough, they said they had plenty of flights coming in from Dallas, and that they were on the phone to insure a spare arrived on the next flight down so it can be exchanged, and that we would take off a bit before lunch. Annoying, but shit happens. Of course, fast forward to noon when designated flight with the spare extinguisher arrives,...with no spare extinguisher. The pilot and flight crew were pissed, and at this point, there are now concerns about the flight crew timing out, they’re not sure where they can get a replacement part now, and they’re talking about cancelling the flight. But, as I mentioned, this was the Monday following the US Grand Prix, so there is very little available in the name of spare seats on any other AA flights that day. Long story short, but it caught ear of someone at AA, they ended up swapping the flight crew, finally getting the appropriate replacement extinguisher identified and brought in, and then we finally went out at 8 PM. At this point, there was probably ~30-40 people on board the flight.

Tl;Dr 13 Hour delay due to a fire extinguisher being below psi.

And just to add fuel, the Austin Airport had a boil water advisory that day so no fresh food/drinks were being served in the airport. That was a fun day.

Suggested by: AMNJG24F

Back in 2019, my wife was 28 weeks pregnant during our annual family trip from Texas to Idaho/Wyoming. We’d normally road trip, but to make things easier for her, she flew with only a carryon and I drove with her baggage, our dog and my mom. On the way back we dropped her off at the Jackson Hole airport, and she had a connecting flight in Denver. “Delayed one hour.” Then, repeated “One more hour,” “30 minutes,” etc. We have friends in Denver who could’ve just picked her up had they just cancelled the flight. But no. United is as United does. 9 hours after dropping her off in Jackson Hole she’s still at the Denver airport at 1am when we’re driving through that way. By that time her friends were asleep and not answering so we intercepted her at the airport so she could drive the rest of the way back with us. 4 hours later we run into a blizzard in New Mexico. Mom’s laying in the back with our dog pretending to sleep, and my wife is crying in the passenger seat. I’m driving 10 mph with the navigation zoomed in so I can see where the road turns and also using the side rumble strips to help. (I didn’t want to pull over in the middle of nowhere because I knew we’d get run into by someone.... and I feel it was the right decision as we did see a few brodozers rumble past us in 3ft of visibility. At least with us moving, slowly, it’d give someone coming up behind us more of a chance to avoid us.) That was about an hour and a half before it subsided and the sub started coming up. Overturned cars everywhere on the sides of the road.

These airlines care more about preserving their gate schedules than providing useful updates, which is why they avoid canceling a flight until it’s absolutely the worst possible case for everyone waiting around. Even if they never have any intention of getting that flight off the ground.

Suggested by: David Thibodeaux

At the time, our son lived in DC; our daughter in NY. My wife and I are in Tulsa.

We’re flying Thursday afternoon to NY for a weekend celebration of father’s day and my son’s birthday—he was my father’s day present 25 years ago. I digress. He’s taking a train from DC to meet us at daughter’s to go out for a Big Deal dinner Friday night (Michelin 2-star) before the rest of our weekend fun.

My wife and I fly after work and are routed through Chicago. Upon landing, it’s Bedlam. People crushed throughout the terminal. We’re told that there are weather delays up and down the entire East Coast. Our flight is cancelled. We’re on standby for the next one. No problem-we get to NY in plenty of time! It’s still just Thursday! The flight we were on standby for? It comes and goes without us or anyone else from the standby list getting on. We’re told we’re on standby for the next flight or we can go to customer service.

The customer service line has more people in it than there are souls in my wife’s hometown, but after not getting even a whiff of standby, we’re in line.

Time marches on. We’re now told that the next flight is full, 100%, and we’re not getting on it, either. The airline is happy to put us on a flight the next day, but because there are so many ahead of us, the flight isn’t until Friday evening and we’ll miss Son’s birthday dinner in NY.

We stay in line.

As we’re in line, it occurs to me that we should rent a car and drive to NY. At this point, driving would get us there before flying! I try to call the toll free number, but between poor reception, loud terminal, and accents, there’s no hope. We eventually get 5g service, get on-line, and order a car from the first national rent-a-car vendor that eventually loads into the phone. Boom. Car reserved, it says.

We make our way from the customer service line to the out of terminal car rental. Customer ahead of us at the counter is HOT. He’s screaming things to the poor counter worker that I wouldn’t say in a bar fight.

Dude is NOT getting a car—they’re all out.

We keep cool, even though they said they’re out of cars. After all, I’ve been told I have a reservation...

The internet never lies.

We get to the front of the line. I ask the counter worker who just got screamed at how his day was going. We laugh. Both of our days suck. One worse than the other.

As it turns out, the reason they were out of cars was because some asshole had internet-reserved the last car they had in stock. That would be me. It’s my car. It hasn’t been cleaned since the last rental, but we can have it. The internet thing worked!

We get the car and, true to his word, it wasn’t cleaned. There was a piece of cheesecake in the center console, but no gas in the tank. Gas, at the time, was a bit over $6/gal at the had-to-stop-there station in the neighborhood outside the airport grounds. We fill up.

I drive the first shift out of Chicagoland, 2 hours. My wife takes the next 6 as we talk to be sure she stays awake and I take the last 4 when she had to sleep. There were more hijinks, what with the prepaid toll thing not working, but we’re at least making good time despite construction. Nobody is on the road over night.

Seems like Pennsylvania never ends! Sunrise over the Delaware Water Gap sure was pretty.

So, we work all day to fly to Chicago, spend a few frustrating hours in and then out of Chicago’s AA terminal, drive 12 hours from Chicago to NY, but we get the car returned, get to the hotel, and then meet up with the kids.

I don’t remember much of the dinner. I just remember being glad we made it.

Suggested by: Oldnslo

I had a long red eye return flight from overseas that connected though Chicago. Schedule was something like early mornign landing, decently OK layover of maybe 1.5hrs, then a short flight home. I was probably supposed to be home before lunch or something.

It was late winter, so of course when we landed in Chicago weather starting acting up & my last leg was delayed, then delayed, then delayed, and then canceled. Was auto-booked onto next flight, which repeated the pattern. Chicago had actually cleared up, but problem was not with the arrival airport & it was pretty clear I wasn’t going to get out of Chicago until tomorrow... but if I rented a car, I could be home at around 1 or 2 am today (well, technically tomorrow, but close enough. I just wanted to be home).

With my Gold Frequent Flyer status I was able to actually talk to an agent in person at the airport & I polietly asked if I could just get my bags & no need to worry about rebooking me again - I’ll just drive home. Tippity, tap on the keyboard for a good 15minutes and... can’t do it. Because I was scheduled only for a layover, she can’t deliver my bags in Chicago. If I ever want to see my bags again, I have to fly onward.

OK... when can I do that? Oh, tomorrow evening?

Some quick negotiating & we came up with a workable solution - There is a last flight out option that gets me to a different airport that’s about 3/4 of the way home. I’ll be able to pick my bags up there, grab a rental car & head home. It’ll probably be 3am before I get home, but still better than late tomorrow.

Flight takes off exactly on time, lands on time, which is still kinda late at this point, and I scurry to baggage claim area to pick up my bags... and then wait, and wait, and wait for bags that never came.

Find the lost baggage agent and... my bags hadn’t even made it to Chicago, they were still back at my original departure airport

!@489!&@(!@^*@&^$!(!@$9!@($(*!@&$(*!&!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Suggested by: Ganzdachhaus

Volunteered for a bump on my return flight from Honolulu. Only a couple hours, what could be the harm? A couple of drinks at the bar, and my flight has been delayed an hour. Another drink or two, and the bar is closing (all of the other shops already closed). Plane finally arrives and we board.

Drugged out kid in front of my row is laying across all 3 seats before we even taxi. While flight attendant is trying to get her up as we begin to taxi, there is a horrible crash/bump (like going over a harsh speed bump). Flight attendant falls and scrapes her knee, so that takes a while to sort out. Flight is then cancelled for the night.

We do get hotel vouchers (this is around 1 am) and stay for the night, but many people have to call in to get booked on the following day’s flights. I’m actually lucky in this regard and already got my flight booked on the way to grab our luggage.

So I spent an extra day in HI, which isn’t really a nightmare.

Suggested by: MrSixx