In February this year I was 8 1/2 hours late on a flight from EDI-LHR (and on the plane for the whole time with nothing but some pretzels and a few gin and tonics to keep me company), although some of the time spent on the ground was at MAN, if that counts!

OK, there was snow and conditions were not good. However, we left more or less on time in the hope of reducing the delay on arrival at Heathrow (first mistake). We got as far as Birmingham and circled round a few times before returning to Manchester and sitting on the tarmac for a couple of hours - no supplies taken on (second mistake). You should have seen the red line on the flight information screen! We then flew to Heathrow, more circling and landed a long way from the terminal and then waited ages for stairs and a coach - must have been well over two hours. It was a 4 p.m. flight and I arrived home in central London at 3.30 a.m. (my only bit of intelligence was to avoid the long taxi queue at T1 and walk to T2 where I got one straight away).