Bear with me, this really is on-topic...

On one of my many UA "mechanical" delays in Denver last summer (DEN-MCO), we sat at the gate for 90 minutes getting something "fixed."

We finally got the mechanic's sign-off, got clearance (thank you Ch 9!), pushed back and had taxi'd out to within 100 yards of the runway -- when the captain said they had a brake overtemp light on the left main gear which would make an emergency abort (if one was needed) iffy at best.

We moved to a penalty box, sat for 40 minutes waiting for the brakes to cool enough to take off, but they didn't. They then said a tug had to come out to tow us in!

30 minutes later the tug still hadn't showed up, so we limped into the gate for a repair. It would be at least 60 minutes to inspect and possibly repair the problem.

The flight crew was getting close to timing out, and the plane had to be re-catered as the food was TOTALLY overcooked and the fresh items were past their holding times.

They actually allowed us the passengers off the plane and offered $10 lunch vouchers for everyone. We went to Steak Escape in the center of the B concourse and ordered lunch, as well as extra orders of fries.

My travel partner and I wolfed down our lunch. The hour was almost up and some people were still standing in line to order their meals!

The extra fries? As we re-boarded the plane we handed a couple of big bags of fries to the purser and cabin crew who were totally surprised and very grateful.

The purser thanked us profusely, and I scored a bottle of a nice Adult Beverage.

This is not the only time I "took care" of the FAs, but it was the most memorable.

The second most memorable was taking about 20 minutes to show one the FAs (HKG-LAX) how to work a Tomagotchi she bought for a niece. I had just bought two for my girls, she saw them, and asked for help because the instructions were in Japanese. No, I don't speak Japanese, I had a demo in HK from someone who already one. I got another bottle of Adult Beverage, but it was just fun to help out.

RAD