Got caught at the airport in a foreign country during the crowdstrike debacle.

Mercifully, our flight was only delayed by about 9 hours, and not cancelled. We were able to get home without too much fuss.

Many people had it much much worse.

Still, that was the longest I’d ever been delayed.

Got stuck at PHL for 18 hours, first plane was broken, when we finally were deplaned the crew had been on duty too long for the second flight, we waited for the second crew, and were about to take and the second plane was broken. They flew in a new plane for us and by the time it got there, the second crew had to leave, so we had to wait for a third crew. I wound up sleeping on some benches in a closed restaurant next to some guy who had a connecting flight out of houston to beaumont.

NYC cars lining up cross the Holland Tunnel near 42nd street Manhattan

Pretty sure it’s tolled on the way out of NYC which makes the traffic worse

It’s only 2 lanes wide

So fucking tired of being forced to visit relatives and just wanna go home… AND STUCK IN THE TRAFFIC JAM FOR HOURS

My worst travel experience was trying to fly out of Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport in the summer of 2022. It was a nightmare combination of hot weather, a big event closing out the evening before (lots of outbound folks) and very bad staffing issues.

I got to the airport just before 10 am for my 2 pm flight, and the security line was already stupidly long, looping around a big unused hall and outside under a lousy, partial plastic canopy. I’m talking hours of waiting in either crowded indoor space or sweating under the midday sun. People were skipping the line in desperation and there were half-assed attempts to stop them. I’m a rule-follower so I waited in the queue, inching towards security.

I got to the actual security gate at 1:55 pm, there were like three gates open out of the multiple dozens of gates they have (I don’t know exactly how many there are). I was through by 2:03. I saw on the departure board that my flight hadn’t left yet due to a small delay, so I booked it to my gate, which was (of course) at the very end of one of the longer “prongs” of the airport. I couldn’t run due to a medical condition, and when I finally made it, I was greeted by the land staff of the airline telling me I missed my flight by a few minutes.

(Cue a break for crying and desperate flight checks through other airlines.)

Due to the sheer amount of delays and people missing their flights, I had another long queue to wait in: airline support desk. Except due to post-covid regulations, there was a vague area with taped-off sections and no actual desk to speak of, with two (2) airline staff trying to manage the 40-50 people crowded around at any given time. I got told to use their mobile app to get rebooked on another flight, but it just did not work. After waiting in line a second time the staff told me again to apply online and tried to shoo me off, but I completed the online form right there and showed them that it wasn’t working. I got parked on the other side of the taped-off area and was told to wait.

Some 15 minutes later, I got handed a new ticket to get me home. At this point it was after 5 pm, and my new ticket was for 9 am the next morning. I wasn’t willing to go outside of the airport and risk getting stuck in security again, so hotels were out of the question. The lounge services I could find that were open were all daytime only, so no dice getting some sleep there. I ended up sleeping on a waiting bench near my gate, as much as you can call waking up every 10-15 minutes in the span of about six hours “sleep”.

I was at my new departure gate at 6 am, not willing to risk anything at this point, and got on the flight with no more issues. Not that we took off on time, it was about 10 am when the wheels of the plane finally picked up off the ground. Thode were the longest 24 hours of my life.

Once I went to take a vacation and was too poor. I’m still waiting

I had four overnight delays in three round trip transatlantic flights in 2025. The airline was at fault for three of them.

When the airline is at fault for a delay of four hours or more on a long flight that starts or ends in the EU, they owe the passenger 600 Euros, a hotel room, and meals, so those were long delays but not exactly terrible experiences.

Getting stuck for 20 hours in the Newark airport due to weather wasn’t as pleasant. The airline did not owe me anything because weather is not their fault. There were hundreds of other delayed travelers sleeping on cots in the halls of the airport. They did not have a cot for me.

O’Hare (ORD).

When? Every time I’ve flown through it.

Longest? 20 hours… I think… My brain has tried to blank that period of time out to save my sanity.

Now I avoid flying through ORD at absolute all costs. DTW, DFW, DEN, hell even ATL are better to fly through. 3 years ago my family flew to Kauai. On the way out we connected in DEN, which went great. On the way back we had to make two stops, first at LAX, the second at ORD. We made it through LAX with no issues. Got to ORD and had a 10 hour delay. The only reason why I didn’t rent a car and drive home was due to being awake for 30 hours at that point (I don’t sleep on planes). Also, the plane was always “just one more hour away”.

6 hours flying out of Gatwick. Fortunately I got compensation from the airline, which substantially reduced the cost of my holiday!

Six hours at Heathrow due to snow. The delay wasn’t too bad, but the airport is. I’ve been to more airports in the world than I can count (must be in the hundreds), and Heathrow is one of my least favorite.

And at that point I was a big smoker, and once you’re past the security checkpoint, you’re unable to leave.

I befriended an Irishman named Fergus (He was from Galway, IIRC), as well as a Canadian couple who were in the same situation, and we used all the food vouchers we got from the airline on alcohol. In my case it was s a coping method for my nicotine cravings, and I ended up completely sandblasted. I have a vague memory of “walking” through the boarding gate when it was finally time, and then my memory is cut off. I awoke in the right airport upon touchdown, though.

And the delay was made so much worse because the amount of snow that shut down Heathrow was next to nothing. My regional airport has several times more and it doesn’t cause any issues.

I will never fly American Airlines as long as I live.

Spent 12 hours at the Austin airport hoping to catch an earlier flight to reach my dad’s bedside in Alabama, but no luck. Plane from DFW to Austin was then delayed by an hour and a half. It arrived, we boarded, we got pushed back from the gate, taxied a bit then stopped. Pilot says they’re checking with maintenance about a mechanical issue. Nearly 45 minutes later they taxi to a different gate and say it may be another hour before we can attempt to depart again. By then my connecting flights were all unreachable, and I opted to deplane (luckily only had a carry-on), and took a ride share home arriving near midnight.

My wife had left in the car to meet me in Alabama, and was already two hours away. She turned around and came home, picked me up, and we headed back out on the 14-hour drive to AL, where my entire family was with my father.

We were crossing the Mississippi River when I learned my father had died. I didn’t get to say goodbye in person.

I took the Amtrak Empire Builder to Glacier National Park, which was supposed to arrive around six o’clock in the evening. The train was already late to Columbus, where I got on, which was not a good sign given the proximity to Chicago. Then, the train had to dramatically decrease speed across North Dakota (85MPH down to 60MPH, IIRC), because record-high temperatures in July were causing the rails to expand too much, making them uneven. I got to the station at the park 8 hours late.

It was way too late to find accommodations. Luckily, I had my camping gear, so I just camped on a bench at the station until morning.

I took a trip to Norway a year or so ago. I was flying first to Denver, where a friend who lived in Denver would meet me in the airport, and then we’d fly to Munich, and from there to Oslo. That was the plan, anyway.

Well, when I got to my gate at my local airport, I found that my flight was delayed by a couple of hours. Obviously too much to have any chance of catching my connecting flight.

I called the airline, and decided to take the flight to Denver that day, and rebook the remaining flights for both me and my friend for the next day, going through Frankfurt instead of Munich. I stayed overnight in Denver, and we set out the next day.

Aaand of course then the flight out of Denver was delayed, and we missed the flight from Frankfurt to Oslo. We were rebooked onto a flight from Frankfurt to Munch, in order to catch a later flight from Munich to Oslo. Fortunately that one was on time. But then the flight to Oslo was delayed; you know, one for the road, I guess. At that point we were just glad that that delay wouldn’t make us miss another flight.

I am counting myself lucky as the worst I have actually experienced was a 4 hour delay on a city hopper from Luxemburg to Amsterdam.

The delay i am super glad I missed. When COVID was proper kicking off I was emigrating from Australia to Europe and the Aussie government changed passengers allowances from 1500 a day to 1500 a week. Emirates said it was stopping flights to and from Australia because of it. I was on the second last flight out.
Landed in Dubai seeing the news about no more flights was interesting.

When I was in the US army I deployed to Bosnia in mid winter. The unit put most of the unit on a train with all of the equipment, ambulances and the unit gear. Our job was to protect and meet the rest of the Unit in Hungary.

As we were approaching the train station in Hungary, they had to use our train’s engine to move other trains, they park the train I was on, in a siding.

We were left on that siding for 20 hours.

Once they disconnected the engine, the train lost all electrical power. So no heaters or light. We had to make sure no one stole anything off the train via foot patrols around the train.

Trains are deceiving because when you ride them you are only aware of the single car that you are in. When you have to walk up and down a train you get an appreciation for how fucking long those things are.

We alternated between freezing our asses off protecting the equipment and freezing our asses off inside the cold dark train.

Flying back from Vegas and the flight I was on got cancelled. They drew out the process to cancel it so that it didn’t get cancelled until another flight already took off. They gave hotel vouchers, but so late that it wasn’t worth it getting a hotel for 5 hours. They played loud music in the airport to keep people from sleeping.

Also had a flight going back home after Christmas that was so delayed I ended up driving back.