Originally Posted by
Dugernaut
In my old days working at PE, we had a Captain who would say during a delay "We are going to be a few minutes late getting out of here. The machine that breaks the wheels and handles on your luggage is broken and we have to do it by hand." It would usually get a chuckle and then he would offer the usual thunderstorm ATC hold.
I'm afraid he got this one from a PSA pilot in California in the late 1960s who was renowned for saying :
"Folks, we are delayed leaving the gate because the automatic bag smashing machine has broken down, and they're having to smash all the bags by hand".
With the demise of PSA maybe it was the same guy.