Originally Posted by
tev9999
I don't think the OP had an option other than overnight since there are no more Europe bound flights after 9:20 to AMS and 9:25 to LGW. The next Europe bound flight would have been the 4pm to AMS the next day, which may not have been much better than waiting for the direct LGW flight at 9:25 (only once a day). It also does not sound like it would have been possible to reroute around DTW since the MCO delay was on the tarmac and there was no way to know prior to boarding.
Tom, you are correct, we had left the gate and were sitting on the tarmac before knowing how late the plane would be. Only after arriving in DTW were we faced with the choice of how to arrive in LON. NWA has one flight a day to LGW to DTW, the AMS flight could have gotten us into LON a couple hours earlier the following day, but we didn't want to risk another connecting flight after what we had been through.