23 years in the Endeavor waiting on some colleagues to come back. I mostly slept and did some research. I was surprised to see how young they looked when they finally got there. I understood it in principle, but actually seeing them was quite a shock.

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.

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.

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.

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”.

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.

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.

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.

Flying from Malaysia to America, I had an 11 hour layover in Incheon because I didn’t pay close enough attention to the departure times when booking the connecting flight.

Thankfully, it was Incheon, that airport is its own city. I found a pay-by-the-hour hotel, took a shower, then slept for six hours. I was the freshest-looking person at the gate when the flight finally did start boarding.

It was the worst delay I ever had, but also in a way the best.

Insignificant by comparison to the things others have gone through, but I’ll tell it anyway.

The plane flew and landed on time, but when we got off the plane we were on the outskirts of the airport in the dark and nowhere near a terminal. Thus, a seatless bus. A what?!

I’d never heard of such a bus or such a thing even being possible. What the heck is going on?

Everyone else seemed to think this was normal or were doing a very good job of hiding their confusion as I tried to play along. I can’t see a thing out there, but what I can see and feel tells me we’re moving. Am I even supposed to be on this bus?

I’d just followed everyone else. No-one had said anything. Where are we going?

Fears were unfounded. We were dropped off at a terminus. Inside, it became clear our bags were taking their own sweet time and journey to the building. Waiting. More waiting. No-one really said anything. No-one was panicking, so I didn’t either. No point making a scene. It’s late. We’re all tired.

Bags did eventually turn up.

I was lucky to be able to get the last trains of the evening back to my home town because it was getting very late. I do not know what I would have done if that hadn’t been possible. I have heard of people having to sleep at airports and train stations. That might have been me.

Yes, I know this makes me sound like someone who has (or had) literally no idea about airports or travel. And you’d be right. That flight home was my second flight ever. There’d been no weird little bus on the way out and I’d never seen them in TV shows or in movies featuring airports.

Anyway by the time I got to my home town, buses had stopped for the night, so I needed a taxi. Thankfully there was no shortage of those.

I haven’t travelled since. Not for any of the above reasons particularly because I know more of what to expect now. It’s been more of a mental health, financial thing.

I have two. Both not the worst in terms of total delay but memorable for being horribly annoying.

1. ICE train from Dortmund to Karlsruhe (Germany) in December 2017. We’d had a couple of centimeters of snow the night before but nothing too drastic… until right after Frankfurt am Main. A railroad switch near Frankfurt am Main Stadion was frozen and could not be operated so we had to stop for over an hour at that tiny station. In the meantime, the beer in the onboard restaurant had run out and some already drunk passengers stole the conductor’s phone to blast the anime music over the train’s speakers and argued who would leave the train to buy more booze. Eventually we had to return to the previous station where dozens of additional passengers boarded. We were confused but got told that ours was the only train that would even attempt the rest of the trip. In the end, we arrived about three hours late.
2. A trip by regional train from Kassel to somewhere near Duisburg (Germany) in September 2021. Should have taken about four hours but due to an unexpected storm and a tree that damaged the overhead lines, the train had to stop in the middle of nowhere. It took 90 minutes just to figure out which taxi company would take us to the next station and a total of eight hours to get to our destination because it was so late at night that at some point no connecting trains were available.

Worst experience was taking the train to the airport, only delayed by an hour but I was running to the check in and they were kind enough to let me board. Got stuck in the safety checkpoint due to not being able to check in my bag because late. Thought I lost my wallet because of rush at the security.

Funniest: Plane delayed by an hour due to Italians.

Most hours: maybe 3 hours. Plane, car, bus. Nothing newsworthy. Just sit down and wait.