Originally Posted by abmj-jr
Heck, try LAX. Got stuck on a plane for almost 45 minutes because we picked up a stronger-than-expected tailwind coming from NRT. The captain announced the "good news-bad news." We got in early but would have to sit out on the ramp as there was nobody there to do Customs and Immigration. We had some pretty irate folks on that old, hot, dirty 747 before they finally let us deplane.
That happened to me in Feb on a NRT-LAX flight. Fortunately, the 747 I was on wasn't as dirty as the one you describe in a later post.