Originally Posted by
FirstInFlight
In your situation, I would interpret the message to be that the delay is indeterminate and that if the captain gets clearance to push back he will immediately do so and those who have stepped off the plane may not be able to get back on. Whether that clearance will come in 3 minutes or 3 hours remained to be seen. But the captain wanted folks to know that there were no promises and that those who chose to step off took their chances.
Yeah, I recall a flight some years ago. We weren't at the gate so there was no issue of getting off but we were on a weather hold, estimated 2 hours (this after already boarding way late.) Not a good thing for us as that guaranteed a misconnect.
An hour into the hold the pilot comes on, "We have a window if we take off
now, flight attendants take your seats." The engines were spooling up as he said that. We got in 20 minutes before our next bird was scheduled to fly, we got there and nobody around except the GAs but the door was still open. Our seats had been given away but they found us new ones in business (three-class airplane, they were nice.)