I may not be as seasoned as some fliers here, but I have logged 1,000,000 miles of air travel in my life if all airlines are combined, so I think I am entitled to say this was just bad, maybe the worst I have ever experienced. 6 hours on the plane and all we did was two taxis around the airport.

Tuesday, May 19, 2026. Delta 740, JFK-SEA. Scheduled departure 4:55 PM. I'm in 2D using a RUC.

4:55 PM: Plane's schedule departure
5:25 PM: Published time of a delayed departure (reason unclear)
6:10 PM: Reached the end of the runway but departures out of JFK were halted due to thunderstorms in the area (though a look at the radar showed just one cell at most a few miles in diameter over Long Island Sound as the only significant weather in the entire NY-NJ-CT area, but that's not the topic of this post and I'll defer to the expertise of people who know about weather and aircraft safety)
6:45 PM: A female passenger is helped up the aisle to the front of the plane as she is hyperventilating and gasping for air. The flight attendants place her in their jump seat near the main boarding door. An announcement is made asking for anyone on board with medical training. A nurse presents herself. I had seat 2D so I caught bits and pieces of the passenger, after she calmed down a bit, telling the flight attendants and the nurse that she sometimes takes anxiety medication but did not take it today and did not bring it with her on board.
7:05 PM: Captain announces we will return to the gate (he did not say it was because of the hyperventilating passenger, but it obviously was as no other planes were returning to the gate)
7:30 PM: Finally get back to the gate, the hyperventilating passenger (who seems to have calmed down) offboards on her own power. As the plane remains parked at the gate with the door open, a few passengers without checked luggage (and perhaps a keen sense that something seems awry) elect to offboard as well. One was the guy in the seat in front of me, he said he confirmed a flight tomorrow.
7:40 PM: Captain said we need to top off fuel and "re-seal the medical kit" and do a little paperwork relating to the medical situation,
8:20 PM: Captain announces that they have a crew duty time issue, but we should still be OK as we can "do a trick" and stay parked at the gate until the number of planes waiting to depart thins down (thus minimizing taxi time).
9:10 PM: We push back from the gate
10:15 PM: We reach the end of the runway, turn onto it, seemingly to takeoff, and we start moving down the runway, but we just drive down the runway, not accelerating to takeoff speed. We turn onto a taxiway
10:20 PM: Captain announces that we did not takeoff in time to avoid the crew duty time rules
10:35 PM: We reach a gate, but ground crew is not available to guide us in. Captain says he has tried to contact ground crew a couple of times but with no success.
11:05 PM: I place a call to Delta Airlines to "protect" myself on another flight (as it still wasn't clear what exactly was going to happen; maybe a new crew would come aboard and the flight would operate 7 hours late?). Hold time is 40 minutes so I choose the number for Delta to call me back when it's my turn.
11:10 PM: Finally we pull into the gate. Crew has no news to offer about what happens next. Flight attendant advises passengers to go to the Customer Service counter by gate B31 for guidance.
11:15 PM: Deplaning. All passengers get to select an item from the snack basket on their way out the door. I run fast to gate B31. I had a head start being in row 2 and am in good shape.
11:20 PM: I reach the Customer Service desk and find it is already about 25 people deep from other passengers on some flight to DTW that got messed up. The line soon grows to 100 or more as more passengers from my flight reach this desk. Only two Delta agents are staffing the desk, and processing time per passenger seems to be 5+ minutes.
11:31 PM: Delta Airlines calls me back. The phone agent lady tells me I can go on a direct flight from JFK to SEA on Tuesday at 7:15 PM, or she can route me through Austin, TX leaving at 7:05 AM and getting me home at . Moreover, she tells me she can confirm me in first class on both legs of the Austin option. So I take it.
11:40 PM: Phone call with Delta concludes, I remain in the Customer Service line to inquire about checked baggage.
11:50 PM: There's a Delta agent kind of hanging out, so I ask him about the checked baggage. He said it will be offloaded to baggage claim but it may be yet another hour or two, and he says I do not need to claim it; it should get rerouted.
12:00 AM: I get a text message from Delta with a $15 meal voucher attached, and an apology for the "delay".
12:10 AM: The Customer Service line has barely moved in 40 minutes and I see little to be gained by remaining in it, so I abandon the line.
12:30 PM: I find a nice area to "hole up" for the night, near the 24-hour McDonalds.
2:00 AM: I spend $13.93 of my Delta meal voucher on a Filet-o-FIsh value meal. So I still have $1.07 to spend. Hmmm. What food or nonalcoholic drink can you buy at JFK airport at 3:00 AM for $1.07?

Other passengers in that service desk line who were busily trying to book hotel rooms reported that there are no hotel rooms to be found within any reasonable distance of JFK Airport. And Delta was not providing hotel vouchers anyway (it was weather and ATC, they said, outside their control). So I resigned myself to spending the night in the airport, in the post-security area. Terminal 4 is huge and contrary to most of the rest of JFK Airport it is actually kind of modern and slick and nice, and not a bad place to hang out; a little light pop music plays at a comfortably soft volume (Supertramp right now). There are two Delta Sky Clubs in Terminal 4, and one of them opens at 4:45 AM and has showers. So I just need to kill time until then. Terminal 4 seems to be a lively place even at this late hour (2:45 AM as I write this).

Anyway, all you can do in these situations is laugh. Getting all huffy or angry solves nothing. And I am on my way home, so it's not like a vacation start or a business event has been ruined. If I were to be angry at someone, it would be the hyperventilating passenger who did not take her medication, and perhaps Deta's or JFK's ground operations that couldn't get our plane off the ground before the crew timed out.