@thumper1 that might have been a better one. I have been in-frugal in Heathrow!
Heath row has entire department stores and shopping malls in the airport!! I’ve never seen anything like it
Early 2000s–Family trip to the west coast. We loved the non-stop that left DC late afternoon and got into Portland OR in the evening. The plane was late in arriving, had mechanical issues and then the airline had no flight crews with sufficient hours left to staff the flight. We hung out in the airport for over 8 hours waiting to leave.
I had a brutal stuck in the airport experience yesterday. I got to the airport in New Orleans at 3:45 for a 5:55 flight. The weather in San Francisco was rainy but my spouse assured me that it was light and spotty and that the heavy stuff wasn’t expected until well after midnight. The ticketing agent assured me that she saw no delays and we should be fine. Excellent. I made my way to the gate, sat down and spread out, and was starting to relax when I got the dreaded alert. The flight was delayed until 8 pm. Grr. Ok. I could deal with it. There are no lounges in this airport so I headed to an in terminal wine bar where I could have a lovely beet salad and sit comfortably. All was well. And then the second alert came in. Now the plane was delayed until 9:40 pm. Oh no. My calm demeanor started to fray. Not only did this mean that the rain would be heavy when we were in transit but there was also rain and wind expected in NOLA. And then they told us 10:!0 pm. Now I started to panic. Was this flight about to be canceled entirely? There would be no food or hotel vouchers for us, given that the delay was weather-related (well, sort of, it really comes down to SFO’s limited landing slots-if we’d left on time, we wouldn’t have encountered any rain at all.) Thank goodness, no. We were lucky to have a captain and gate agent who were bound and determined to get us in the air and on our way. We finally got out, with a mere 6 hour delay, and I slept through the entire flight.
^^did you ever find out why? I’ve had delays that long that had no explanation so I figured it was mechanical or logistical. Airlines seem reluctant to tell you the reason for the delay.
Negotiating against his union? Uh, nope. He would not have stood up for you. He probably would have told the other flight attendants to spit in your drink if he’d realized it. Things get really ugly during negotiations. I think I would keep a really low profile during negotiations if I was you. 
I’ve had a number of stuck in the airport experiences (though the only overnights have been trying to space A in the military). Probably the longest getting stuck out was on a military C-5 flight over the Atlantic during Desert Storm. We were on our way to Kuwait to bring in fire fighting equipment, as Saddam Hussein had set all the oil wells on fire, and Kuwait was like a scene from Hell. We had a bleed air leak that put a hole in the engine pylon, and had to divert into Goose Bay, Canada. In the winter. For a week. And there was nothing whatsoever to do, and nowhere to go, because it was way too cold. So I spent a week in the officers quarters, in a hard twin bed. Then again, it beat being on fire over the Atlantic Ocean.
We had trouble flying back to East Coast from LA when our boys were about 4 and 7. Flight kept getting delayed by mechanical problems until it was finally cancelled. The boys were usually pretty good travelers but patience was wearing thin. (Mine and theirs!).
They had to rebook us and could only get 3 of us on one plane and 1 on another. I was so tempted to send whiny 4 year old off by himself! (kidding) In the end, I had to fly with the 2 kids while hubby flew solo. He had the nerve to say to me - “I don’t usually sleep on planes but I was so tired, I just drifted off.”
I am impressed with the level of recall everyone has! I have two stories but they’re brief on background…
The first was last year. We flew to Ithaca via Newark. Instead of a brief layover that was expected, we were in the EWR airport for 8 hours. It was April and the terminal was incredibly hot and muggy. We were told that it was unseasonably hot but that they hadn’t switched over to AC from heat yet. It was an incredibly long, hot and uncomfortable day and we missed our dinner event in Ithaca.
The other was years ago when we were flying from the east coast to SFO and had a layover in Chicago. Don’t recall why we couldn’t get our connecting flight but we ended up with vouchers for a hotel. The kids were maybe 5, 8 and 10 and I remember we were all in the hotel room sitting on the beds and a cockroach ran over my leg (I was only in a nightshirt so it was, literally, on my leg). Of course I shrieked…not sure I got any sleep that night and so happy to be home the next night.
@greenwitch, I believe it was a combination of weather and SFO. The runways are limited and I guess they shut some down when they have rain and then the scheduled flights compete for a place in the queue. This I learned from someone else waiting for the same flight. The captain apologized to all of us at the beginning of the flight and said, “When the weather is bad in San Fran, it doesn’t work well with our airport configuration (MSY).” Maybe someone can translate that for me?
I would go berserk if I waited for 6 hours with no explanation!
Maximum sustainable yield? I.e., A fancy way to say capacity?
Random airport stories…
I remember being on a plane once, in San Francisco, and telling someone there was some kind of fire event close to the wing. I was quite calm, but I suspect we had to de-plane, etc.
I remember being many months pregnant and HOPING to get out of the Boston airport back in 1994. I recall seeing all the “clubbing of Nancy Kerrigan’s knee” news footage, over and over. I think I was on one of the last planes out due to weather.
Our first trip to Hawaii, from the East Coast, involved a complicated return sequence. It seems like we had to fly from Maui to Honolulu, and then wait in Honolulu for several hours, to take a night flight back through Chicago. (I admit, I could have trips confused). We had 3 kids, probably 9, 11, and 13. There must have been some kind of airline screw up, because we weren’t even sitting together for the long flight. We finally made it to Chicago, and then we had a 6 HOUR delay. The kids handled it all better than my husband, relatively speaking. I remember most people wanting to sleep, and my kids being relatively well behaved but playing some kind of card game that I’m sure annoyed people on the flight.
The most frustrating and more recent trip was just between Maui and Kauai. We were scheduled to make the short flight in the late morning or early afternoon. We wound up spend 7 additional hours, in the Maui airport, waiting to get to Kauai. Basically, we wasted an entire day of our expensive vacation, sitting in the little airport, because they couldn’t tell us when we would be able to get out. Now I refuse to fly between islands on the small carriers (airline we used only had 4 planes total… that didn’t occur to me as a problem when I booked).
Seattle to/from Tampa around December. Take the night owl from the west and plan a southern plane change to avoid winter delays, right? Nope. The bad weather in New York City made the plane coming in late so son missed his Phoenix flight, was rebooked late in the day until we told him about earlier options. Flight back via Minneapolis- no problems. Go figure. Who knew the late evening red eye plane would have come across the country and there would be an early snowstorm in the northeast?
The year of the Chicago blizzard in February we had gone to Mexico and left our car at O’Hare, driving from WI. Saw the weather coverage of Chicago and the Egypt news on TV (between trips to the bathroom- bad meal one night). Return day were told we could stay another day but chose to have the layover in Charlotte. Realized it was a hub for the many Steelers fans going to Dallas for that great Super Bowl victory for our favored team.
Missed flights are another thing. Ever since H told me he missed an international flight I have been paranoid about being at the airport in plenty of time. I believe his story involved so much time before the flight he did something and missed a connection. Mother-in-law got to the airport a day late once in India- the flight was just after midnight and she got the date wrong because of the arrival date. Her travel agent should have been clear about the departure date. The 12.5 hour time difference. Her trips involved train/plane/automobile.
Her longest planned return delay was the week the British and US were probably going to first be doing things in the middle east. Her flight from O’Hare was via British Airways (therefore to London to Bombay) with another couple. At the airport everyone was told they could rebook a later date because of middle east uncertainties that week. The other couple chose to stay and she also chose to stay and not fly alone. We made the hours long trip home and she went weeks/month later. Just one of her many flights via many airlines/cities.
Of course the time I was gimpy due to plantar fasciitis I was the one walking back and forth through terminal construction to find out when her delayed flight to her D’s was leaving, H was at work - the temporary gate area setup had no amenities and no personnel. Winter.
We went a week early to Seattle one spring for a family wedding and went to Portland since we had just been to Seattle a few months before (the plans/invite came after that trip). Relate this to college. Son was flying out on a Friday (managed to miss no classes coming or going). We got a call from him from his local airport wanting to know his airline and flight number. He apparently did not print that data as he only had one free print left on his college account (Take CS classes and get so many free print pages) that he used for a math problem set. Fortunately for him his airport was fairly small and I had made a printout which I had in my purse so we knew when to pick him up- we were on the road. He also forgot his cell phone charger, battery ran out and we lost track of him- he was with his cousin the groom for the 5 k run the morning of the wedding et al. Yes- the bride got her hair done while many of us did a flat (!) run or walk that day.
The time we left early for an airport because of the threat of snow- got there but then they closed the airport. There went an extra day in S Cal when H had a conference.
If being on the plane that landed at the Keflavik, Iceland airport (US military base) counts as being there… Flight from London to Chicago was closer to the N American coast but quicker to go east to drop off a first class passenger having heart problems. I can see why my ancestor left that treeless island. There were many of us physicians on that flight- regular class, but H had the specialty. He finished the flight in first class and got a bottle of champagne out of it. We missed our connection and I swear the 3/4 hour flight we eventually got took twice as long and not only did we taxi around O’Hare a long time but also caught night time glimpses of Lake Michigan several times after takeoff- why the plane didn’t just sit at the gate (or did they need it for the next plane)?
Calling an airline to see how long before our early/first of the day flight we needed to be at the regional sized airport. The obviously out of town/state person was telling me 2 hours but I was sure the airport didn’t open that early-surprised her with that possibility. One does not want to wait in the car in a WI winter.
After college, I was with a friend in Europe and we had a 7 am charter flight out of Paris back to NY. The charter company wanted us there 2 1/2 hours early, before public transportation was running, and we were out of money to pay for a cab. We took a bus to the airport about 10 pm the night before.
We had a couple bottles of open liquor that couldn’t go on the plane so we decided to drink them at the airport. We bought a couple cups of soda and started drinking. By the time our half bottle of tequila was gone all the airport shops were closed. We found a vending machine that had some Sprite to get started on our bottle of vodka, about 80% full. By 3 am we had bought all the soda in the vending machine, were nearly out of vodka and were staggeringly drunk. My friend goes wandering off looking more soda.
In the meantime, a sketchy looking barefoot Asian guy approaches me and starts up a conversation trying to get me to smuggle cocaine into the US for him. No way. Plus it smells like a set up. During this my friend comes staggering back holding two beer mugs. Apparently Orly shuts down pretty tight, all except a 24 hour bar. We relocate to the bar, still drinking beer when the morning shift starts showing up to order coffee.
We get to the meeting place in the airport at 4:30 at sit. And sit. And sit. No news, no plane in sight. Finally, about 8 am, they take us through customs to a room with not enough chairs for everyone, close the door and put a guard on it so we can’t leave. It has only a one toilet bathroom - they don’t dare feed us. Around 11:30 they relent, coming in with a tray of food and some coffee. We each get a croissant the size of my thumb and a Dixie cup of coffee. The plane shows up at 3 pm, a 30 year old DC-8. Then the hangover starts to hit.
I guess the good part is that most of the passengers were like us, young, single and adventurous which kept the griping to a minimum. The flight was the bumpiest ride of my life. They ran out of barf bags and the crew was walking around with trash cans to catch the vomit. The good part is that the hangover I think helped, and with most everyone else airsick we each got two meals.
We got to NY late and I had the pleasure of spending that next night in Port Authority waiting for a morning bus.