Travel
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Our tech team has launched updates to The Nest today. As a result of these updates, members of the Nest Community will need to change their password in order to continue participating in the community. In addition, The Nest community member's avatars will be replaced with generic default avatars. If you wish to revert to your original avatar, you will need to re-upload it via The Nest.
If you have questions about this, please email help@theknot.com.
Thank you.
Note: This only affects The Nest's community members and will not affect members on The Bump or The Knot.
POLL: What's the longest you've been stuck in an airport?
I have the lovely privilege of picking up a friend at the airport at 3:30am today.
I feel so bad for her!
Her flight was supposed to leave at 8:55am and actually took off at 12:00am because of mechanical problems.
She was at the airport from 7:15am - 12:00am. 17 hours.
She lost a whole day of vaycay and is beyond exhausted because every 2 hours they would say "We may be leaving soon, please stand by."
I know many of you have been stuck even longer...
How long and what was the airlines compensation for you?
Food vouchers, hotel stay, credit towards future flights, cash?
Lets hear it.
Re: POLL: What's the longest you've been stuck in an airport?
I consider myself very lucky. My longest delay was 18 hours when they completely messed up the 747 we were supposed to fly to Beijing (it was a total debacle; they got the fuel tanks out of balance and couldn't fix it) and canceled our flight. They flew us out the next day, and they had to put us up in a hotel and give us meal vouchers, since it was entirely their fault. I wouldn't have minded too much, except that I was flying over to find an apartment, so I had to go straight from a 13-hour flight to meet with the realtor and start looking at flats.
On my last flight to Newark, I hit that October snowstorm and ended up with 7 hrs delay on the plane, and 10 hours in the airport. We had 2 tarmac delays (three hours in Montreal, and another three hours in Newark), and an hour in holding over Newark, so our 7? hour flight ended up being 14? hours on the plane. Luckily they serviced the lavs in Montreal, because it was a little 757 that can't handle more than 8 hours of passenger use. They broke out the emergency granola bars in Montreal, so by the end of the time in Newark we had no food or water. Adding insult to injury, we were sitting a few hundred yards from our gate, which was unoccupied (they didn't have enough gate crews). Once we got inside, of course our connecting flights were all gone, so I slept in the airport and caught a stand-by flight out the next morning.
The first time I hit a weather delay in Newark, they rebooked me onto the next confirmed flight, which was leaving in two days! Luckily I was able to get onto a stand-by flight before that.
Luckily only a couple hours in the actual airport. I was kind of "stuck" in the plane going to Egypt - had a direct flight from NYC, was about 4 hours into the flight when for some mechanical reason, we had to turn back around and go back to NYC. At NYC they would not let us off the plane since it would only take an hour, but it took about 2-3 hours. Finally we were off AGAIN, but they failed to clean the bathrooms and had run out toilet paper. I was SO glad to get to Cairo! They gave us $300 vouchers for our 10 hour delay in the plane.
My MH this past Xmas was delayed 48 hours - she did not have to stay at the airport the whole 48hours though! She was only scheduled to stay with us for 4 days and when the plane was delayed 48hours due to weather, she had less than 48 hours to spend w us! She got NO vouchers.
The longest I've ever been stuck in an airport was 8 hours in a satellite terminal at LAX (the old American Eagle terminal) that was under construction. That was fun.
Longest delay was 14 hours, but they put us up in a hotel.
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Coming home from Hawaii we were at the airport for about 15 hours because United was having issues and many of their flights were cancelled. We couldn't get a hotel room anywhere close.
Once we took off it was run off one place to catch the other for the next two connections. When we were rerounted we we split up and given middle seats. We had no time inbetween conncections to even pee and they were not accepting cards on one of the flights for food. I hated being hungry and sandwiched inbetween strangers after not showering or brushing my teeth for over 24 hps ever ours.
I still have not recovered, we have been doing road trisince. We will be flying later this year so hope I am ready by then.
Going from NYC to Port Au Prince Haiti, they kept delaying our flight, so we sat there for about 6 hours. Then, the finally canceled it. We had to wait in a long line for about 3.5 hours to get new tickets and they arranged a hotel. After waiting another 2 hours to get transportation situated we finally got to the hotel. So I guess that'd be about a total of 11.5 hours at the airport, then overnight at the hotel.
Lesson learned was to always fly with some type of carry on with some toiletries and clean underwear since we couldn't get to any of our checked luggage.
Many years ago, I was on a plane that had to make an emergency landing due to mechanical issues. There was a bad snowstorm going on so we couldn't take off again--for 2 days! We didn't have to stay at the airport, though. The airline paid to put us up at a hotel. Not sure that would happen today. I was a kid at the time and I thought it was really fun.
My worst experience was being stuck on the plane for about 18 hours. Flight from Milan to Chicago went fine. When we got to Chicago, it was storming and they wouldn't let us land. We circled for a long time. When we got low on fuel, they sent us to Milwaukee. After refueling, we couldn't take off again, because Chicago was so backed up. We sat on the runway in Milwaukee for hours.
Finally, the pilot told us that with no end in sight, we would be getting off the plane and they would reschedule us on new flights for the next day. Yay! I just wanted off. Then, it started storming in Milwaukee. Pilot gets back on to say ground crews can't work when it is lightening, so we would have to wait AGAIN.
Finally, after 18 hours on that plane, they let us off. It was about 3 in the morning. They sent us to a hotel for about 3 hours, then we had to be back at the airport to leave again the next day. It was a very long trip.
I thought we agreed to never discuss the Icelandic volcano again
I got stuck in numerous airports during those weeks--JFK, DXB, TAN and CDG. The last was the worst. It was close to 24 hours in the airport and then another 4.5 on the Tarmac. To the great credit of Air France the champagne was flowing freely.
Unfortunately it was my 8th international flight in three weeks so champagne was insufficient.
Awww... But I love the story about the guy who bought a kid's training bike with pink-tassled handles so that he could buy a "bicycle ticket" on one of the ferries when all the pedestrian passenger tickets were sold out.
MH was stuck for over 24 hours in a South American airport- Buenos Aires, maybe?- in 2007 because of strikes... not the best memory for him.
ETA: The longest I've been stuck in an airport was 8 hours in LAX. We were so tired that we were those nasty people laying on the floor in one of the terminals.
18 hours. I was flying from Vegas to St.Louis with a layover in Cinncinati. There was a blizzard in Cincinnati and I knew I wouldn't be getting out. We landed in Cincinnati and my flight was to STL was delayed for three or four hours then cancelled around 10 pm. I was put on a flight the next morning at 11. They didn't give us any vouchers for hotels or food because it was due to the weather.
My most memorable delay was in Las Vegas (appearently Vegas is bad news for me!), I was flying from St.Louis to Honolulu, around 2.5 hours into the flight a man became ill and we had to land quickly in Las Vegas and I do mean QUICKLY. We came in hard, stopped at the very end of the runway with the engines literally smoking. We pulled up to a gate and let the sick man off, after the paperwork was done the flight attendent went to shut the door and deployed the life raft. We waited three hours for mechanics to come fix it, eventually no one could and the lift raft was taken out and all the people in first class had to move to the back. Eventually, we took off and landed in Honolulu 6 hours late with applause from the passengers.
I also had a memorable experience of having stomach flu on a flight from Chicago to Geneva, with a connection in Heathrow. I was denied from flying the Heathrow-Geneva leg by the pilot, I was too sick. I vomited for 5 hours of the Atlantic crossing and throughout Heathrow airport until the crew of my LHR-GVA flight had pity on me and put me up in a crew rest area so I could sleep until the last flight of the day, 10 hours later. I was fine by then and boarded the plane. It was terrible.
My husband and I have had two trips to Europe delayed 24 hours because of bad connections (weather and a passenger wanting to get off the plane), and he had an additional trip to Europe delayed 24 hours because the idiot AA csr bumped him off a flight and he missed his connection. In two of those cases we knew we'd miss the connection before the initial flight so we just went home, and the other time when we were stuck in a connecting city near where I grew up so we stayed at my sister's. As far as being stuck on a plane/in an airport, when I was trying to fly from Atlanta to Cleveland (a 2-hour flight) it took 8 hours due to weather, mechanical problems, and a need to stop and re-fuel in Indianapolis because we had to re-route around a storm.
For one of the Europe trips we got upgraded to first class the next day, but only because they were the only available seats and we were polite to the CSR. For the one where we stayed with my sister they gave out hotel and meal vouchers. AA gave my husband a $400 voucher and put him in first class the next day since weren't supposed to bump him. With the Atlanta/Cleveland thing they gave us all a free drink and I never pursued a complaint.
Travel is fatal to prejudice, bigotry, and narrow-mindedness, and many of our people need it sorely on these accounts. Broad, wholesome, charitable views of men and things cannot be acquired by vegetating in one little corner of the earth all one's lifetime.
Mark Twain
My Travel Blog
I shouldn't be reading this. I'm boarding a cross country flight on Saturday with a toddler in tow headed directly into a snowstorm.
Ah chit!
9 hours in Jamaica...I kept going to try and use the rest room and just couldn't do it, it was SO bad (and I live in Baltimore and have seen nasty restrooms, this one was crazy crazy bad). There is NO place to sit, no place to eat, no magazine shops...it was like being stuck in hell...NO AC. All this because one of the toilets on the plane was broken (when we finally flew home, toilet still wasn't fixed so you could help but think that if we were going to fly with a broken toilet, 9 hours ago would have been nice.
We FINALLY got a food voucher, the only open place to eat was Margaritaville at the other end of the airport...our voucher covered 5 bucks...so H and split a burger, each had an iced tea and still had to pay 18.00
I kissed the cement like the Pope when we landed in Baltimore