In late May 1997 my father, myself and my friend were booked on the Thursday Cathay Pacific 747 flight from Perth to Hong Kong (PER-HKG). I remember this one clearly because of the series of events that cascaded in to the longest delay I've ever experienced.

After take off around midday, an engine issue occured, and after dumping fuel over the ocean we landed back at PER with emergency vehicles on the ground. Disembarked back to the lounge (my father had Qantas status allowing lounge access). Mid afternoon back on board, sat on the aircraft for a while, eventually offloaded and told the aircraft would not be departing that day.

My father went home, but my friend and I weren't going to pass up the opportunity of a free overnight hotel with meals, so off the Hyatt Perth we went.

Back to the airport the next morning (now Friday). Boarded late morning, taxied and commenced take off roll, but aborted soon after and returned to gate. Back to the lounge for many hours.

Eventually senior ground staff explained there was an issue with one of the engines and they were unable to get the part sent over - and Qantas didn't have one at their maintenance base in SYD. So we were stuck.

Now this is where it gets interesting, and explains why this delay kept snowballing. That same week in late May 1997, Cathay Pacific grounded it's entire fleet of A330-300s, due to an engine issue with the Trent 700's. Meaning that they had a large and sudden shortage of aircraft on their routes, and they weren't able to send a replacement aircraft (any aircraft type) down to collect all of us.

CX's PER-HKG schedule wasn't daily, and the next scheduled flight was on the Saturday (48 hours after our original flight first departed) but was fully booked, and we were told that they wouldn't be bumping anyone from there flight to accommodate us as it would mean affecting a second load of passengers (makes sense).

We spent the day in the lounge again, and around late afternoon we were shuttled back to the Hyatt. A reporter from the local newspaper came to the hotel, my friend and I were interviewed and our quotes were in the next morning's West Australian Saturday edition.

Now by Friday evening the novelty of free hotels, meals and drinks allowances were starting to wain. I had started a new job in the Philippines and was heading back to work after my first break at home in Perth. The Hong Kong trip was something for my father and I to do as it was one month before the handover and he wanted to see it again (my reasons were more avgeek related - to spend time plane watching at Kai Tak). I only had the weekend in Hong Kong before heading back to Manila on the Monday, and time was running out.

Cathay Pacific's Perth station manager agreed to meet us at the hotel, and after some protests from us, came up with a solution. They would put myself, my Dad and my friend on the late night red eye Qantas service from Perth to Tokyo Narita arriving the next morning (Saturday). My dad and I would transit on to a CX flight from NRT-HKG, while my friend would fly from Tokyo to London (his intended destination, Hong Kong had only been a transit for him.

We were upgraded to business class on the QF PER-NRT flight. My friend had some hilarious photos of the 3 of us clowning around which I'd love to dig out again.

Transit in Tokyo, Dad and I finally got on to Cathay metal for the flight to Hong Kong and arrived later afternoon on the Saturday, some 40? hours AFTER our original ETA on the Thursday.

Aftermath: both my father and I wrote to Cathay Pacific (old school - pen and paper through the post in those days!). Cathay Pacific duly came back with a compensation of AUD$1,100 each by way of a travel credit. I transferred mine to him, he and his wife eventually put it towards flights to Canada for a conference.

That's my longest ever flight delay. Above information is correct to the best of my memory - I'm sure the newspaper article survives in an article somewhere still.