The title says it all. What was the flight that was the most delayed you've ever been on? Or the most delayed you've ever heard of?

Personally I was flying from YVR and someone wanted not to go. We had to take their bags off the 747 which was a lengthy process.

I've had the pleasure of enjoying a delay of seven hours in SEA for weather in Houston that just keep rolling over the airport. I don't remember how that delay was handled with crew time however, I believe it was a crew that was just starting their day.

7 days or, to be precise, 186 hours after I should have arrived... thanks Iceland!

Longest schedule change was a similarly crazy 56 hours, thank this time to WizzAir.


Dan  

10 hours and 29 minutes on Biman DC10 S2-ACO "City of Shah Makhdum (R.A.), flying Abu Dhabi-Chittagong-Dhaka.

Didn't expect anything else 

18 hours on the tropical island of the Dominican Republic (okay, the island itself is called Hispanola) back in 1991. A scheduled stop for our DE DC-10-30 routing BLA-SDQ-MUC-FRA could not continue due to a engine exhaust temperature sensor had quit to work while in flight from BLA to SDQ; the spare part had to be flown in from the U.S. the next day.
370 pax had to be accommodated on short notice that evening in hotels around the airport.
Best part was to bypass any immigration procedures, receiving strange looks from those regular passengers queuing at immigration (in & out).
-HT

About 5 hours on a WN MSY-HOU flight. Summer thunderstorms had brought HOU to a halt and the fact that on that afternoon the MSY-HOU flights were all routing ABC-HOU-MSY-HOU-XYZ meant that every flight, not just the one I was booked on, was looking at a 5 hour delay.

For what it's worth, that's still the only major delay I've ever had to deal with. Guess I'm a bit lucky.

Almost 9 hours, thanks to Air Moldova. Don't remember an individual flight being delayed more than that, but I did spend overnights in ATL when I missed the last flight out of the day, probably giving a delay of about somewhere around 16-20 hours or so total.

It was a US Airways flight from LGA-IND. rain delayed us 3 hours, boarded, sat for another 2 hours, taxied to runway, sat for another2 hours until they said that their day was over and they couldn't fly anymore. It was midnight by this point.

All together 7 hours. And 4 of them on an embraer regional jet. Not that fun.

7 days due to Iceland's ash cloud on Air France.

Normal delay 18 hrs, thanks Iberia

24 hours - Egyptair technical fault going from LHR about 30 years ago.

Several 12 hours plus delays with Aeroflot in the days of the Soviets for who knows what reasons, plus an overnight at Nice with EI due to a technical fault.

Does cancelled flights count?

For me flying NZ CHC-WLG, WLG was closed due to weather and my original NZ flight at 3pm was cancelled, re-booked on a departure 1 hour later, then all WLG flights got cancelled that day. Got on a flight next day at 8am after spending the night in a top hotel with a very nice dinner......all at NZs expense. 12 hour delay getting home but got a nice night away

The longest delay where the flight wasn't cancelled was an ATA flight, MDW-MSP, in 2004. Chicago and most of the midwest was getting pounded with thunderstorms, and I think that we were delayed about 6-7 hours, IIRC. I had to drive home to RST after arriving to MSP in the wee hours and got home at about 3:30 am. I had originated in IND, and I remember thinking that I could have driven the entire IND-RST and made it home faster. About the only thing I remember about being at MDW all those hours was seeing Will Perdue holding court with a group of Chicago Bulls fans in the concourse, as his flight was also delayed (for those who don't know, Perdue is a former pro basketball player that I remember more for being tall than being talented).

In a series of unfortunate coincidences, I had the exact same flight cancelled all 3 times that I was scheduled to fly it in 2011. I went to PHL 3 times in 2011 for work. All three times I was scheduled to return on the last PHL-MSP flight of the day, connecting to my current home in BZN. All three times (12 April, 17 June and 19 August) the flight was cancelled and I was rebooked on flights the following day. All three cancellations were due to the inbound flight going mech or being severely delayed at the origin.

Nearly 19 years now and still going on.

In Winter 93-94 I wanted to fly from OTP to VIE but due to fog, rain and whatever else I do not remember, the plane did not depart. Some people were scheduled on the next day, some had to wait 2 days. I preferred to try Hitchhiking and arrived after 2 days by truck to Austria. It was a funny roadtrip and I never contacted the airline to refund my second leg of the flight.

Two full days from Sin to Milan via Moscow on Aeroflot.
It was way back in the USSR days in 1990 and my atrophying grey cells might miss or mix up some minor details, but here goes:

It started with a small one-hour delay as the arriving aircraft landed late for my boarding in Sin.
My layover time for the connecting flight in Moscow was supposed to be 2 hours but was being pared to half of that.
Still, I was assured by the ground agent that I will be able to make it as they will be arranging for people to be on hand to expedite my transfer. (With my checked bag being made readily accessible from the pax cabin stairs to the cargo hold below, I could just grab it upon landing and run along).

However, on the scheduled refuelling stop at Tashkent (the Ilyushin IL-86 did not have the range for Sin to Moscow direct), the cook had overslept and the galley restocking ate up another hour. As it turned out, I arrived in Moscow just in time to see my connecting flight took off.

With the next plane to Milan another 48 hours away, and visa-less, I together with 4 other stranded passengers became "special guests of the Soviet Union". Bypassing the immigration/customs checks, we were ushered away to a state guesthouse that normally housed government officials on the outskirts of the city. The lodging and food service were impressive and we were feted well, but we were virtual prisons in the sprawling compound. We were free to roam as we wished in the vast forrested area within the gates but after a couple of hours, there wasn't anything of real interest.

Luckily, the next late afternoon, the manager of the guesthouse offered to bring us for a quickie illegal tour of the Red Square (for US10/- or was it US$20/-?). All five of us took it up without hestitation and were firmly told to stay tightly with the manager. That two hours made up for the two days of boredom. The changing of the guards at the tomb of Lenin was a real eyeopener, as was the chance sighting of then President Gorbachev as he rode by in a huge limousine with a long motorcade in attendence.

Over 12 hours on Tower Air flying JFK-SJU and booked by the cruise line.

Long story short: Scariest flight of my life once we actually left. Celebrity booked us on these flights and promised they would hold the boat. They didn't. We fought tooth and nail for accommodations in Puerto Rico. Then booked on our own San Juan-Antigua-St. Thomas to meet the boat. Slept on night outside in Antigua Airport when they closed the airport. But LIAT was great when they heard our plight next day flight and literally gave us full run of the beverage cart.

Came back into Port of San Juan and had already rebooked on TWA, Tower had a sign on their desks "closed for one week." They went out of business next day. I don'/t miss them one bit.

The longest delay I've ever experienced personally was 4 hours. Flying AC Jazz BOS-YHZ connecting to AC mainline YHZ-YYT.

The YHZ-YYT flight kept on getting delayed due to fog and low visibility in the foggiest city in all of Canada, St. John's, Newfoundland. The flight was scheduled to depart at 11:30 AM, but we didn't depart until 3:30.

I remember sitting at the gate in Halifax while the gate agents kept delaying the flight later and later. At around 3:00 they announced that they finally got the OK to begin boarding, and we departed around 3:30.

2 days ! BWIA LHR-POS-GEO . Loved the Tri Star but they always had issues. We had a 5 hour delay as fog at LHR meant the inbound diverted to LGW . Then when it repositoned to LHR we took off and after 30 mins engine failure. We dumped fuel then landed at LHR. Bused to a hotel where we had to wait until it was fixed the next evening .

I don't remember precicely how long any of my flights have been delayed, but these are my most memorable delays.

In January 2005 I was supposed to fly RDU-ORD-SMF on United, except there was a blizzard in Chicago that day so there was a ground stop on flights to ORD. After a few hours delay we finally board and start to taxi, only to pull of to the side and wait at least another hour, maybe more. By this time pretty much everyone had missed their connections, so one of hte FAs took an informal poll -- should we keep waiting or go back to the gate, cancel the flight, and try to get rerouted. We went back to the gate, and I got put on a flight to IAD with a connection to SMF from there. The actual delay on the RDU-ORD flight was maybe 4 hours before getting canceled, but the overall delay to my arrival at SMF was significantly more due to a long connection at IAD and an additional 1 hour delay on the IAD-SMF flight. I was supposed to arrive late afternoon, but didn't actually get to SMF until after midnight.

The other memorable delay was in 2004 on DTW-RDU. While I was on the rental car shuttle to the terminal a thunderstorm rolled through. I figured that wasn't a good omen. As it turned out pretty much the entire Midwest was getting pounded with thunderstorms that afternoon (I almost wonder if this was the same day as redzepplin's 6-7 hour delay) and *everything* was either delayed or canceled. It was complete chaos in the McNamara Terminal. I think the delay to my RDU flight was only a few hours, but it felt like a lot longer just because I got to the airport way earlier than I needed to, so I just remember spending the entire afternoon at the airport.

I was flying LHR-FRA-BOG, we arrived at FRA only to a tech issue with the A340 that was taking us to BOG. We were given a ton of Marks (yes, it was around 1999) and lunch, dinner and breakfast coupons. I remember they gave us something like $20 worth of lunch at McDonalds and since we had to spend it all or lose the remaining amount, I ate about 4 BigMacs. We were then told we were getting re-routed FRA-EZE-BOG since the tech issue hadn't been solved and the next flight to BOG was 3 days later. After sleeping in the floor at FRA we boarded to EZE. After a 12+ hour flight, we arrived at EZE and when boarding to BOG there was another delay due to weather. We ended up arriving 45 hours after our STA. My wife has never flown LH since.....

For me it's the AB special flight that was supposed to take place on the last day of operations at TXL. Considering that the flight has not been officialy cancelled, the delay is still running... and going strong 

Only two flights that I can recall failing to leave more or less on time.

1) Early August 2008, RJ AMM-JFK. It's one thing if a short domestic flight is running an hour or two behind schedule, it's quite another when a long haul journey begins almost a day later than it was supposed to! I guess due to the nature of long haul ops - aircraft and crew scheduling, slot availability, etc., it is not at all uncommon for long haul delays to trump the average short haul delays that most pax grumble about.

This is the journey home from an epic summer of working and traveling throughout the Middle East. A few days in Jordan made for a fantastic last stop in the region, the Dead Sea and Petra capping off a trip that had also taken me to Dubai, Bahrain, Muscat, Istanbul, Alexandria, and Cairo. By now I had become familiar with the standard protocol at airports in the region, complete with a checkpoint on the airport access road for car bombs, a security screening of carry on AND checked baggage upon entering the terminal before check-in, an actual passport/visa checkpoint typically only seen elsewhere upon arrival or when using U.S. Preclearance, a standard carry on and personal security screening, and random spot checks at the gate. In comparison, American airports and TSA are a walk in the park. As such, I made sure to arrive at the airport plenty early for my flight.

As I pull up to the tiny, decrepit AMM terminal, I notice a crowd of angry travelers stuck outside of the security checkpoint granting access to the check-in desks. As at other Middle Eastern airports, one must show their plane tickets to security staff and scan all checked and carry on baggage in order to enter the terminal and check in for their flight. I manage to get through this crowd, only to be told that I cannot enter through to check in. No further explanation. Suddenly it dawns on me that this angry mob consists of folks on MY flight, and we have two options - cram into a narrow hallway full of vendor kiosks and people constantly pushing through with their bags, or sit outside the terminal in the blistering desert heat.

The security personnel continue to diligently keep us out while letting folks on other flights leaving around the same time, like RJ to ORD and DL to JFK, through. There are no RJ staff to be seen, they are all out of sight on the other side of the checkpoint. Eventually an RJ staff member appears, telling us that there is "some delay" and that we will be taken to the transit hotel. Once there, we are given rooms and told to wait for "announcements" on our flight. This would be fine, except for the fact that this hotel is probably equivalent (in terms of amenities and cleanliness) to that flea/roach/prostitute/STD infested motel you've seen from the freeway but wouldn't dare set foot into. Obviously I won't be spending any time here, so I quickly head for downtown Amman, taking a gamble on my assumption that we won't be leaving until late tonight. By leaving this atrocious dump to make the most of my extra time in Jordan, I will not be kept in the loop with any flight updates.

After a great evening in Abdoun (a very nice area in Amman), I head back to the transit hotel/airport. Still no word on the flight, so I decide to kill time by walking between the hotel and the airport terminal. Now that it's dark, the weather is surprisingly bearable! Of course, the guys at the military check point along the way - quick to show off their machine guns - can't seem to understand why anyone would be walking around. Though we can barely communicate, they smile and let me proceed.

Around 10 PM, already about 12 hours after the flight was due to depart, they start rounding everyone up at the transit hotel. The buses drop us off at the terminal, but security still won't let us through. After another hour, yes, now it's okay to go ahead. The entire process is painfully slow, complete with a thorough hand search of every single carry on item as we enter the secure gate area. Yes, I'm sure this is simply the Jordanians adhering to American security protocol, but the process was far less arduous when leaving for the U.S. from Europe and Asia...

By 2:30, we finally manage to depart - about 16 hours behind schedule! Fortunately I had booked my connecting flight (on a separate itinerary) for a few days later, as I had wanted to spend some time in New York. This delay simply cut into my time there, and I managed to get back home to Chicago as intended.

2) Late June 2012, B6 LAS-LGB. Has anyone ever told you to suck it up and take those first flights out in the morning, because you have a far greater chance of getting there on time? If I were you, I would heed their advice!

Not being a morning person, and this being my flight home from a wild Vegas trip, I have booked myself on the last flight of the day back to LGB. It is a beautiful day in Las Vegas (and also in Long Beach, for that matter), and this an easy routine 45 minute hop for virtually all pax and airlines/crew involved. Since the weekend crush of travelers has already left yesterday (Sunday) or earlier in the day, the airport is pretty quiet by late Monday afternoon, and I expect today to be a breeze.

I arrive at the B6 counter plenty early, where am I am told, "As you are aware, your flight has a 3 hour delay...due to weather at JFK". I'm sorry, but I wasn't aware, and I don't care for your matter-of-fact tone either. Southwest Airlines, arguably a superior option on this sector given their high frequency service to Vegas from 4 of the major LA area airports, sends me complimentary text message updates for delayed and/or canceled flights. I suppose it was my responsibility to call your airline or otherwise check the flight status myself online, as they certainly weren't planning to contact me about this delay? Oh well, I will see off my cousin and her friends, hit the slot machines, get caught up on phone calls, and make use of the airport's free wifi to kill the time. No big deal, I grew up in the Midwest and I'm sure the East Coast gets its fair share of major summertime storms as we always did. The only thing is that I have a major interview the next day, so I would like to get home by a decent hour in order to be well rested and prepared for it.

A few hours quickly fly by, and I head to the gate around 9 PM for my 6:30 flight. "Did you get your voucher yet?" says a lady as I sit down at the gate. "No, what are you talking about?" I reply. "Oh, better go now, I just spent mine on this coffee. We are delayed til midnight, but the vendors are all shutting down soon". I inquire at the counter about the voucher and more importantly this delay - if I started driving now, I would get home faster than I would waiting for the flight. I am given a vague explanation about "weather at JFK" once again, and told to spend my $10 voucher quickly. $10 won't get me much from overpriced airport concessionaires, but at least it's something.

Midnight comes and goes, we are shuffled to a new gate, and finally on board by 1 AM. We pull back, and sit quietly on the apron for about an hour. No announcement, until the plane heads back for the terminal. "Sorry folks, we had a mechanical issue that wasn't resolved, and now the crew has timed out. They have had a long day because of bad weather at JFK".

Now it is about 2 AM, the pilots and flight attendants quickly rush off the plane, leaving an exasperated gate agent to deboard a plane full of angry pax. With my interview now less than 8 hours away, I immediately book a rental car and hit the road. Two girls on the flight agree to share the cost of the rental car with me, in exchange for a ride back to L.A. We end up arriving at my apartment in Hollywood a little after 8 AM, approximately 12 hours after I would have gotten there if my flight was on time, but sooner than if I had been rebooked on any flight the next day. After the ordeal, I was able to get a refund for the canceled sector and generous flight vouchers, making possible my incredible trip to Puerto Rico last week!  .

About one day. I was flying CUR - AUA - BOG on MM's BAe-146 and the plane quit in CUR. It took a day to fix it. It worked out really nice, because we got put up at what was back then the Hilton on the beach close to Willemstad around 3pm and the flight was scheduled to leave the next day around 3pm.

Cheers
Coal

It was so long ago that details are sketchy. I was flying BRU-JFK on DL. One of the pilots complained he hadn't had enough rest due to construction noises in his hotel and the flight was delayed several hours (I hope they moved the crew to another hotel). I don't know how late we left, but I know it was well past midnight in BRU and I got to see a sunrise in New York...

UA. SEA-LAX Around 3h 45min but added another 30min I think, due bad weather out east. My 735 was late arriving. I was unable to switch flights to ensure I made my onward LAX-AKL flight. My arrival into LAX mean that I went from an ample connection of 4h+ to if I ran as fast as I could from T5 to T2 with my bag I might just make it on flight closeout. I did so, and found out that the AKL bound flights had been delayed, also by about 4 hours - so I made my flight....

I have also specifically booked on an AR 342 flight AKL-SYD because it was around 8 hours late. It went from a 6.20am departure to around 3.30pm (which was far more acceptable as a departure time) It wasn't a distressing delay, but I guess it takes the cake for the largest delay...

When flying ATL-AMS in 2003 or so the captain made an announcement above BOS that we would have to make a landing at JFK because there was no running water. On the tarmac every 30 minutes the announcement was made that it would just be another hour. Hours past, the plane was so hot they had to open the doors to let some fresh air in as it was making passengers sick. I believe that after about 5 or 6 hours we were finally allowed to enter the terminal at JFK. We then had to sleep in the waiting area overnight and had to wait for another aircraft to be ferried over to JFK. We finally departed for JFK in the afternoon.

The funny thing is that the flight was overbooked and they were asking if anyone would mind staying in ATL overnight. My mom considered it ( I was about 8 at the time, my sister 3 years younger) but we decided that it would be better not to as we would then arrive back home on sunday and have to go to school the very next day. If we would have stayed in ATL we would only have been home a few hours later but had a much more comfortable trip.

My longest delay was my first ever flight! Not a good start. Routing was EWR-YYT on a COEX E-145XR. The flight was supposed to leave at 6:10pm but there were thunderstorms over Tenessee. Since our aircraft was coming in from BNA, the flight was delayed to 7:25pm. That was fine. We continued to wait and my Uncle and I kept checking the departures board. Suddenly we realized that for our flight, it no longer said gate A10. It said A24 now. No announcment was made, so we had to get all 6 people who were traveling with us accounted for, and trek over to the new gate. By this time, it was 7:45pm. They were getting ready to board when we got there, but as not many other people had noticed the gate change, we had to wait for about 25 passengers to find the gate. Finally an announcment about the gate change was made at about 7:50pm, and within 5 minutes, the gate area was swarming with pissed-off passengers. When finally pushed baqck at about 8:15, and the pilot made an announcement that we were 13th in line for takeoff!!! We waited for the runway for about 1.5 hours and finally took off at about 9:55. As we climbed, everybody onboard noticed lightning out the left side of the plane. The flight attendant told us that we were the last plane that departed before a ground stop went into effect for EWR. We ended up taking off about 4.5 hours late, and arrived about 3 hours late (thank God for schedule padding!   ). By the time we landed, it was about 12:30am and our rental car station was supposed to have closed right after we landed ontime (at about 9:30pm), but the girl who worked there actually waited for our flight to come in. It was a long night for us all and thank God I wasn't driving the rental car because I was out cold by the time was actually found our hotel.

Well, I had an overnight cancellation once and then I was routed on another airline making the trip much longer... probably added about forty hours or so to the trip.

My longest delay was probably on HP flying LAS--LAX. Also my only rejected take-off to date. Apparently, on the take-off roll, a warning light came on and they decided to stay on the ground and fix it. We sat in the plane for three or four hours, I think.

Try being a non-rev   . Had a delay that I personally dont want again. SJO-IAH, back in the days that CO had only 1 flight a day from there, onboard enroute to IAH, when the Capt tells us we have a pressurization issue. We will be going back to SJO instead of landing in MGA. Get back safely, sit around the terminal for over 5 hours, only to have it cancel. Non-revs were not entitled to the same amenities that regular pax were(hotels and such).

Next morning, back at the airport, trying to catch the flight again, get pulled from the passport check line and told that I wouldn't be able to get on this one. Instead of plenty open seats, it now is overbooked by 100. Back to the hotel for another night.

Third morning, back at the counter, the original aircraft had been fixed. I got on the first flight, get into IAH, my bags aren't there. End up waiting inside Customs for 2 hours for my bags to show up on the fixed aircraft. Finally on my way to the connecting flight to ATL, only to be delayed for 2 hours for tech issues.

Only 56+ hours, SJO-ATL, not bad at all.

fshplns

I flew MIA-BOS-LHR-BCN In early January of 2010 right during a winter storm in LHR.

My MIA-BOS flight was normal I arrived at 8pm thinking I had to rush to Terminal E for my 8:40pm departure to LHR. When I got out of the plane I had messages that my flight was delayed till 12:45am. Oh well for rushing. I waited about a hour to find my bag and re-tag my bag for a later connection into BCN. A 2:30pm departure from LHR instead of 10am. I also got a food voucher so had some dinner in BOS and waited in an almost empty Terminal E expect for a TACV flight. I remember some of the stores had to stay open. We departed around 12:45pm about 4 hours late so not too bad.

I get into LHR and there were lines everywhere and not even a gate for our 777. I am in a security line thinking I am going to be late for my flight. I got into terminal 3 and the info screen just says "please wait" it is 2:30pm, it will say this for another 7 hours. I never knew when my flight was going to leave it did not say delayed or an ETA just please wait. I HATED that. Finally get a gate around 8pm or so. There we sat in this remote secured area for a hour and then boarded our 757-200. We then waited two hours to be de-iced on the airplane just sitting there.

Finally we takeoff. I was suppose to be in BCN around 11:30am on Wednesday I ended up in BCN 2:30am on Thursday. So 15 hours delayed in total. Not the worst thing ever but sitting around terminal 3 with large carry on bags for all those hours never knowing when the gate was coming up was very annoying.

December 2009 - heavy snow in norther Europe played havoc with schedules, and we were 4 hours late out of LHR being rebooked on another carrier. However, this delay meant we missed our connecting flight to SYD and had to spend 8 hours in HKG.

We couldn't be bothered getting a visa and the train etc so stayed in the airport touring all the oneworld lounges. Not bad actually - the very quiet and relaxed BA/QF was the one for sleeping, the CX Pier the one for food.

Quoting SurfandSnow (Reply 20): The only thing is that I have a major interview the next day, so I would like to get home by a decent hour in order to be well rested and prepared for it.

Okay I'll bite - plus, you simply cannot leave us in the lurch now - what happened at the interview? Did you make it, were you on fire, did you get the job?

Quoting Yflyer (Reply 17): (I almost wonder if this was the same day as redzepplin's 6-7 hour delay)

I think that my delay was on either June 10th or 11th. I didn't keep a flight log then, but I was able to find on the internet that the event I was attending in IND finished on the 10th. I'm pretty sure that I flew home on the same day.

Quoting redzeppelin (Reply 30): I think that my delay was on either June 10th or 11th.

I didn't keep a flight log back then either, so all I really remember is that my delay was in the spring of 2004, but as best I can remember it seems more like mine would have been April or May.

12 hours at GRU due to weather!
And 8 hours at MIA! Thanks Tower Air!

My longest delay was around 15.5rs flying LHR-GIG with Varig some 18 years ago. The inbound flight from CPH was delayed and by the time the luggage and passengers had embarked the flight had missed the LHR night time curfew. So instead of flying out at approx 2230 on Friday we left at around 1400 Saturday.

To compound things varig terminated the flight at GRU [a scheduled stop] and we had to transfer to a domestic flight to complete the journey to GIG. The B737 provided didn't have enough seats for all the transferring passengers - so me and about a dozen others were told we had to wait for another flight, so we arrived eventually in GIG around 18 hours later than scheduled.

Conversely I had a MINUS 36hour delay in Cuba. Whilst touring the island we were told that our flight back to HAV in 2 days time from Baracoa had been cancelled and we had to leave pretty much immediately on a specially laid on flight with Aerogaviota on an AN26 - which is another story!

Around one hour. I was flying CX 889 YVR-HKG a couple of years back, scheduled departure time was 0200. Apparently, a passenger on the JFK-YVR leg fell ill and had to be removed from the aircraft by medical staff at YVR. In the end, we boarded at about 0240, pushed back, de-iced and took off at around 0315, if I recall correctly.

Then there was QF 68 from PER-HKG about a year ago, scheduled departure time was 2230, but due to the late arrival of the aircraft, we only pushed back at around 2350.

All in all, I've had pretty good luck with delayed flights (or lack thereof).

Around 6 hours on a NB flight from LGW-BLL. The aircraft broke down in BLLbefore it could fly to LGW. The ythen got hold on a MD83from Austria which broke down upon rrival in BLL. The yfinally ot hold on a Jettime 737 which arrived in LGW much delayed and then we finally went to BLL. On the way back we got a quic routing + the wheather allowed us to land from the west so at 1:15 it is by far the quickest London-Billund flight I have taken.

A few days later I got a free voucher for a fligth. I used that in October 2008, less than a month before NB went out of business.

/Lars

My longest delay was a BA L-1011-500 LHR-YEG-YVR in December 1981, soon after BA started service to YVR/YYC/YEG (YYC/YEG stops were dropped after a few months). The flight left LHR exactly 24 hours late due to a snowstorm that caused the usual chaos at LHR the day before.

My longest delay was 56 hours. Flew into YBP on Air China and flew out of LZO on Air China 2 days late due to mechanical problems with the return airplane at YBP. Had to take a 6 hour bus ride through the mountains of Sichuan Provence at 4 am. Quite the experience.

4 days! Due to weather in the UK. Lots of snow. This was november 2010, the Big Freeze I believe the media called it. Was supposed to fly EDI-AMS on Monday. All flights ex-EDI cancelled, rebooked for Tuesday, flying EDI-LCY-AMS. Cancelled again, rebooked for Wednesday, a direct flight this time. Once again cancelled. Rebooked for Thursday. As things were looking bad again - and Glasgow was now open - I asked to be rebooked ex-GLA. This turned out to be a good choice, as EDI was still closed on Thursday. Flight was supposed to leave at around 17.00, but departed at 21.00 in the end, because this time AMS was closed during the day due to snow. Pax with connections weren't allowed to fly, as there were already hundreds of people stranded at AMS for the night.

My longest delay without weather was on U2, flying BIQ-LGW. 5 hours. Flight was supposed to depart at around 10.00 but left at 15.00. Detailed explanation from the captain though. Original aircraft at LGW went tech. Spare plane was not available but flown in from LTN to LGW to pick up BIQ-bound pax, so it was 5 hours all and all. Ended up missing my flight ex-LHR (with KL on a seperate ticket). Fortunately I already saw this coming and called ahead and was rebooked (at a fee of course) on a later flight.

I just realized that I had another 15 hour delay due to the Iceland volcano of 2010. I flew in two days earlier from BCN for a weekend in MUC. It was springfest. I got on one of the last flights into MUC, thinking they ash would not spread to MUC. Well I was wrong and decided to just cancel my flight and I took a 18 hour bus ride from Munich to Barcelona with maybe 3 or 4 stops. Wow that was a long ride. Got in at 6:30am or so was suppose to fly in around 2pm the previous day. Also didn't get to add LH as an airline flown as I flew Spanair to MUC. Guess I still can try out LH, not Spanair.

Very surprised nobody mentioned the delays that occurred during Northwest's infamous Blizzard of 99' situation. It stretched over 2-3 days and some passengers spent up to 4 or 5 days in the terminal, night after night. Something like 12000 people the first and second night. Once things were up and running, as one of the few gate agents to make it to work it was like, (me asking pilots) do you fly the A320? (me asking FA's) can you get your crew leader to dispatch you with these pilots? (me asking pilots) which of these 7 A320 flights should we make it LOL..at that point litteraly people hopped on whatever flight to wherever just to get out of there so anything we could get going we tried...ill never forget it

4 days stuck in HNL when a DC10 needed a new engine from GE with Air New Zealand (1970's)

5 hours is not much, but it was important to me. Dec 17, 1971. My parents' Air India 707 charter was delayed from 8pm until 1am. My 14th birthday gift was to fly as an UMNR to LHR and my first 747 ride was supposed to be on Pan Am. Luckily, a BOAC 747 was also delayed until 1am. So we all arrived at LHR at the same time. A boy always remembers his first......747.

16 boring hours in RIX waiting to fly back to STN on FR. Fuel pump and engineers had to be flown in before we could get out of there. It sucked. We had hangovers.

Quoting Skyeurope (Reply 3): 10 hours and 29 minutes on Biman DC10 S2-ACO "City of Shah Makhdum (R.A.), flying Abu Dhabi-Chittagong-Dhaka.

17 hours on a Biman A310 that was then switched to a DC-10 without the ground crew re-issuing boarding passes, which made for a REAL fun boarding process  

14 hours care of EA and bad weather at ATL. The flight to BDL I was supposed to fly on was over booked so the next flight was my option and it was to leave at 7:00PM. The weather moved in...bad storms...airport closed. Ended up spending the night in Terminal B. My flight finally left Atlanta at 5:45AM to BDL. 14 hours after my original flight I was supposed to be on departed.

Closely followed by 7 hours in ORD trying to get back to BDL in a snowstorm. After hours of the airport being closed and tons of people in the terminal, United actually herded all the passengers who were scheduled on the two earlier cancelled BDL flights to one gate...where a 747 was parked. Everybody got on with 4 seats to spare and made it to BDL, everybody dragging themselves off the jumbo jet at 4:00AM!!!

Not really a delay (because I ended up on a different flight), but I had a pretty long wait trying to get to SIN after the whole QF32 debacle in 2010. Everything seemed to go wrong, from memory we got there about 40 hours behind schedule...