Post your worst air travel experience

[Steve]

Ten days ago I got on a flight from Chicago to Orlando, was in Orlando eight days for work. I was in the window seat on the right side. One row back on the other side was a baby, a kid, and their mom (window, middle, aisle). The WHOLE flight, that baby was shrieking - no, screaming - because her older brother (the kid) kept touching her, annoying her, etc. And what was the mother doing about it? Absofnckinglutely NOTHING. All babies should be sedated before flights :| I felt sorry for my co-workers who had to sit around them.

 

[acemcmac]

Mine was also spirit. Spirit is a discount airline that goes from atlantic city NJ to all points FL... Had awful weather on the return trip, there were a bunch of really drunken dogfaced women screaming and just making the experience sitting in the back all that much worse and then they started puking when we got over the Del-mar-va

 

[neutralizer]

Oh I had one from New York to Phoenix that was delayed for 2 hours. American West sucks. I'll never fly them again.

Edit: Southwest ftw.

 

[igowerf]

On a 14 hour international flight, I sat behind this girl who immediately put her seat all the way back. She wouldnt' put it up when it was time to eat and after a flight attendant forced her to put it up, she put it back within a few minutes.

 

[YetioDoom]

Flight was delayed about an hour. Had to go to a different gate. IT WAS THE WORST!!!1!!

 

[CrackRabbit]

Being stuck on the ground in Las Vegas in 110* heat with the ground A/C not being hooked up and having to wait for fuel to be taken off the plane so we could take off, and then being diverted to Lubbock to refuel. Was 5 hours late getting home.
At least I got free Alkiholik refreshments out of the deal.
This was SWA btw.

 

[Xyclone]

All my flights have been smooth so far. :thumbsup:

 

[edro]

- Left for Las Vegas from Columbus, Ohio at 7:00PM.
- Lay Over in Nashville, arrived at 8:30PM.
- Las Vegas runways were flooded, so no flights going into Las Vegas could take off until there was clearance.
- There was clearance at 1:30AM. (stuck in Nashville airport (mainly the bar) for ~4 hours)
- Arrived at Las Vegas at 1:30AM (Las Vegas Time)
- Since all planes landed at the same time, I was stuck on plane for another 1 hour.
- Luggage claim was another 1 hour.
- Taxi wait was another 1 hour.
- Arrived at hotel at 4:30AM Las Vegas time (7:30AM EST)
- So I was up for ~26 hours straight...

My story probably sucks compared to most. I didn't mind the inconvenience, because I was already a little drunk from the Nashville airport Bar, and I had a few beers on the flight.

 

[Boxxcar]

TWA flight with wife and kids from London to the US. Stewardesses served up dinner and then disappeared. Literally disappeared. Travelers were so upset with having their food trays sitting in front of them forever, that people started stacking their trays on the floor near the galley and exit doors. Call buttons were simply ignored. The stewardesses did not show up again until we were getting ready to land. Worst flight ever. Soon afterwards, TWA went bankrupt.

 

Originally posted by: Garth

Originally posted by: Ipno
I once had a flight from Cleveland to Las Vegas where I had to sit beside this girl who thought she had to pray loudly the entire time for the plane not to crash. I would normally not care but it was a red-eye and I was trying to get some sleep.

Weird. I had a flight OUT of Las Vegas back to Burbank, and I sat next to a girl who first wept audibly during take off, yelped and gripped my arm tightly against the arm rest at every slightest bit of turbulence, and even screamed so loud that everyone turned around to look at her when the plane banked hard around to align itself with the runway (we were in the very back).

Under any ordinary circumstances, that would have bothered the sh!t out of me, but since the flight was only 50 minutes long, and I was hardly sober, it was actually kind of entertaining.

-Garth

Sounds like my sister.

 

[Boxxcar]

Been there - done that. The main reason babies cry inflight is because of the change in altitude and the fact babies can't "pop their ears" manually. Parents need to prepare for flights with kids and have a good supply of gum or hard candy. For babies, they need to pop a bottle in the mouth during take offs and landings.
As for the mother not doing anything, she was either exhausted from traveling with two small kids on her own or stupid. She could have partly remedied the situation by sitting in the middle and separating the two in addition to the remedy for popping ears.
I've been in both situations before - yours and hers. Try a transcontinental flight for 12 hours with twin 3 year olds and a 7 year old.
As for sedation, I'll have some Valium thank you!

 

[Mill]

Continental screwed me here.

I was at LaGuardia on the same day as scorpmatt. There were tons of weight problems due to the heat and fueling, so planes were delayed, then there was a storm, and then there were air-traffic delays. I missed my connection to Birmingham, so I had to wait and get the final flight out to Birmingham. Not really that bad, because I was sick as a dog during the Continental mishap, and Delta was friendly and re-booked me immediately.

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Coming home from Italy.

Flew into JFK. Things were normal. Maybe a 30 min delay or so but we still got onto our flight to SFO well within time. Boarded and as always it takes about 30 min to takeoff due to the queue for the runway at JFK.

Fell asleep INSTANTLY and I was knocked out for like almost all of the 5 hours. Weather was bad in SF. Well it was cloudy (very low and dense) but not windy. No rain, no storms, nothing, just bad visibilty. Apparently the generator blew up at SFO and they couldn't do instrument guided landing. We circled around forever, and the it passed minight meaning San Jose airport closed. Oakland's airport didn't have TWA so we had no choice but to keep circling. Finally landed at Sacramento and we were given the option to bus to the Bay Area. We decided against it so we fueled up and waited for status on SFO.

2 hours later the captain announced that we're flying to LAX. Flew there and landed there at like 4AM. Got breakfast and slept at a motel until 10. Got on a flight and flew back to SFO. Still cloudy as sh!t but the stuff was repaired. We circled for another hour before finally landing.

As I was on the ground, I noticed the clouds were about 50 - 100 ft above the ground only. As planes were taking off and still touching the ground as they were angled up, you could see the clouds pass between the wings. Yea.. it was that low.

So a day late.. Nothing bad.

My last trip to China faced a 3 hr delay on th e return flight so that I had to run with a broken foot at LAX to catch my flight to San Jose. Luckily Southwest was delayed as f*ck too so my efforts were useless. My foot got only worse.... =(

 

[KoolAidKid]

I was flying from Memphis to Seattle on Northwest. About 20 minutes into the flight I had just ordered a beer. They give it to me, I take a sip. The flight attendant then comes in and takes the beer from my hand with no explanation and goes back up to the front of the plane. 10 seconds later the noise level drops significantly on the plane. I look out the window and notice that the right engine has stopped. Right after this the captain comes on and calmly mentions that we are flying using only one engine and that we need to make an emergency landing in Kansas City. We flew at low elevation on a single engine for 45 minutes before landing safely.

I was stuck in the Kansas City airport for 9 hours. All of the restaurants had closed for the night. We finally got another plane and i made it to Seattle at 4 in the morning. About half on the passengers refused to get on the second plane.

The weird thing about this experience was the unnatural calm exhibited by everyone on the plane. Everyone was absolutely quiet until we landed.

 

[meltdown75]

heh - similar to CrackRabbit's. delayed from taking off from Vegas @ McCarron, about 1 1/2 hours. stuck on the tarmac with no AC, very hot inside the plane. Champion airlines. we were also late showing up for our flight out of Detroit Metro and I got the sh1ttiest seat on the plane, right next to the bathrooms, last row, aisle seat (pun intended). wife was seated 8 rows ahead.

 

[Excelsior]

I actually haven't had a truly bad experience yet. So far my best were on British Airways and Lufthansa (in business class, suhhhhweeet).

 

[Suspicious-Teach8788]

Originally posted by: neutralizer

Originally posted by: mitaiwan82
flew from Taipei to Macau last summer to visit China...the flight was delayed for a few hours due to problems with the plane. We got on and off the plane about 3 times, almost flying one of those times, only to be stopped by another failed safety check. Some people got really pissed off and called the press (Taiwanese people like to make a scene), so there were camera people around before everything got sorted out. I just hated it cuz I had to wait on the airplane without A/C...hot, stale air sucks.

Wow. I had the same situation. I was flying Shanghai Airlines from Shanghai to Guangzhou, the plane was delayed and then suddenly they let everyone onto the shuttle bus to the plane, but drove us in circles around the airport and refused to let us out. It was hot and stuffy in the bus because it was packed so when they finally let us back off at the gate, so many people were so pissed off and rallied up that they wanted to call the press. Not to mention this was the date of the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square incident. They asked the manager what was happening and she said that she couldn't tell them and they all got so pissed off and arguing and stuff. I just went back to the lounge and got my free drinks and food. They finally let us on the plane, but we still waited an hour in the plane without A/C.

Dude Beijing Capital International. We had like a 2 hr delay to Shanghai. They changed gates on us 3 times too. Finally they boarded us onto busses and drove us in circles and didn't let us out. It was so stuffy some old lady passed out. They finally dropped us at the plane and my mom REFUSED to go into the plane thinking it was the same stuffy atmosphere. The security guard was like wtf??? why don't you get on the plane? And my mom was like omfg you guys nearly killed us on the busses its so hot. Guard laughed and said there's AC full blast on board. So I went up and my mom stayed down on the ground. It was damn chill in there so I told her to go up...

I don't understand what it is with China and lack of AC. They dont even turn on AC at Guangzhou in the morning and it gets pretty bad by midday. How can you be in an airport thats like 75 deg F and with humidity. I would die. If you don't turn the AC at like 72 degrees I will refuse to ever set foot in that building unless I need to.

 

[MrCodeDude]

Had a 6:00am flight out of San Jose to Cleveland through Continental. They board everyone and then they tell us that there is a problem with the nose-cone. They make everyone stay seated on the plane while it takes them two hours to repair it. They did bring in hot chocolate and cereal though. When we finally got to Cleveland, our flight had to circle around the airport for 30 minutes before we could land. We were about an hour and a half late for our connecting flight. We arrived in Cleveland around 5:00pm or so. They wouldn't put us on a flight because they were all booked, so we stayed in the airport until it closed at 2:00am. They finally said they could put us on a Greyhound bus to get into Dayton at like 5:00am or we could go to a hotel and catch the connecting flight out at ~8am. We chose the latter, when we got on the shuttle, they let this lady get on even though she said that the airline had said that the hotel was booked and she needed to go to this other hotel. There were probably 11 people on the shuttle when there should have been 10. So we got the short end of the stick and that lady stole our room since we were last in line. We had to go to this run down motel that smelled like mold and cigarette smoke. And then the shuttle to take us to our flight FORGOT about us and we almost missed the 8am flight to Dayton.

I <3 American and United. They've always been good to me.

 

[imported_Beavis]

All My flights have been good so far

Just got back from Atlantic City on Ryan International Airlines a few days ago, and had no problems