klanfa

A couple of years ago, boarded my UA 757 MCO-ORD, Christmas day. All is well, everyone's in their seats but we're not moving. "Ladies and gentlemen, we have found ants in the galley. We ask all passengers to disembark."
I was pretty bummed since that was gonna be my first 757 flight (they're not at all common in Europe). Turns out a different 757 just got in from EWR and they were gonna use it for our flight to ORD. Ended up being only an hour late in ORD. Hopefully the EWR pax didn't get too antsy.

gooselee

Great thread, OP!

To be fair, I usually have my phone out when I'm on a plane and pick it up to take with me to the lav vs. leaving it at my seat. Sometimes I'm inside the lav before I realize I have to put my phone in my pocket, esp. if I happen to be sitting right next to it. For whatever reason, those have a higher frequency of being the flights where I maybe have a couple drinks, and thus have to pee, and thus perhaps have a higher likelihood of missing my pocket when my elbow hits the inside wall of a 737's mini-lav.

^

I like to believe for every story we see in the news about something terrible happening on a flight, there's another five or ten others out there more similar to this one where someone actively did something right and we never heard about it.

I fly in/out of IAD regularly and always grouse to myself about DL having those two gates all the way at the butt-end of B. It got me thinking/realizing, DL seems to have a habit of somehow selecting/getting gates at the far end of concourses at most of their outstations I can remember. PHL, MIA, DFW, BDL,...seems like I'm always trekking to the far reaches of the terminal to get my DL flight.


As for my own story, it seems most of my delays are plain ol' WX so nothing exciting about the cause. But I have a good memory of a particularly bad WX delay in PHL where the whole airport was shut for a couple hours while an especially nasty line of summer thunderstorms blew through - this was one of those that knocked out power and threw over trees and stuff, something the Weather Channel would give a name nowadays. We had started boarding our flight before the storm hit, hoping to push and get in the air before the storm hit, but I guess it came in faster than they thought and the airport started getting pounded just as the final pax boarded. Capt came on the PA and said we'd give it a few minutes to see if maybe we can sneak out between storm bands or something. About 15 mins later he comes back on and says it's not looking good, and anyone who wants off the plane can leave; then GA announces that they are allowing all flights to de-plane, but don't go far as they'll make terminal wide announcements when they're going to start re-boarding everyone.

I was in FC and decided to stay on board where I had a nice book and PDBs were flowing. Maybe half the plane decided to go wait things out in the terminal. Shortly after that, a redcoat comes on board and announces that pizzas have arrived in the terminal if anyone is hungry. She then hangs up the PA and reveals to the FC cabin that she has a stack of menus from one of the restaurants in the terminal - her only ask is we don't order anything too involved. A bunch of us (including me) order sandwiches and stuff, redcoat leaves, and 20 mins later she and a GA return with a bunch of to-go boxes. We tried to pay for our food and she said DL was taking care of it...eventually one lady suggested she just take the money and apply it to a charity drive on behalf the PHL station or something like that. I don't remember details other than at some point I handed someone $10 that went in a pile that went to the redcoat and GA. I didn't even care if they just pocketed it as a tip. Eventually pushed back over 2.5 hours late and spent another long while in line for takeoff - pilot floored it on the way to ATL and I think we wound up getting in 3 hours later than scheduled after all that, but it was the happiest plane full of delayed pax I'd ever seen.

Still one of my favorite DL stories to tell. Lots of good memories of the PHL staff when I was a regular up there.

jamesteroh

A couple years ago I was flying dtw to NYC. The inbound was from BOS and already late coming in and they delayed boarding because the cabin smelled of fish. Someone had apparently checked fresh fish from Boston and not sure what happened but something happened on the inbound flight and the cabin reaked of dead fish. As we were boarding the smell was almost unbearable and the pilot assured us that once we were airborne it would be better (and it was) and said the smell was a lot worse a few minutes before boarding.

tentseller

AS I am a fan of Ben Franklin who has bailed me out many sticky situations:
"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days"

tentseller

I guess what is ok on the road in Italy is not ok on airport grounds.

tentseller

I can't even recall the number of time where a label was missing, safety placard missing, wrong exit row cushion size, and other what seem like trivial FAA regulations causing a delay.
The Flyboys in my circle of acquaintances has mentioned that FAA has the right to revoke the pilot's license for flying a plane that is not in compliance with FAA regulations, so it is what it is. There are plainclothes FAA compliance inspectors; unlike FAMs they are harder to spot.

dblumenhoff

A couple of years ago, DL Shuttle out of the Marine Air Terminal at LGA. They pull the jetbridge back and then we just kind of sit there for a while. Then the pilot gets on the PA and announces that the rampers forgot to disconnect the HVAC system before retracting the jetbridge and it had damaged the connection point on the aircraft. They needed MX to come check it out and see if they could fix it. After a long wait, MX determined it couldn't be repaired quickly enough. Fortunately, we were in a terminal full of the same planes going to the same 2 or 3 cities and we quickly got a replacement.

thibderoc

It was in Paris but I think nobody here will be really surprised to learn that...

Jinxed_K

Still to this day I have no idea how it could have happened unless it was unlatched or something.
20-ish years ago on a US Airways flight from Buffalo to DC in the wintertime, plane was being de-iced and apparently the force of the de icing fluid hitting the emergency exit window blew it in. Small delay while maintenance came and fixed the window, pax in the exit row got a de icing fluid shower. Seemed to be fine afterwards though, no replacement plane needed.

Danymal

Hi all:

I'm a longtime lurker and first-time poster. I'm generally quite happy with the service I receive from Delta, even as a lowly GM. Events on a Endeavor Air flight last Friday irked me and continue to bother me today, so I figured I would see whether any of you seasoned travelers have ever encountered a similar situation and if so, how you and Delta addressed it. The short version is that the flight I was on returned to the hardstand after taxiing towards the runway in order to board two additional passengers who somehow managed to miss the initial boarding process. The longer, more detailed version is below.

DL3819 from LGA to BGR was originally scheduled to depart at 8:15 PM on 3/16/2018. At 3:58 PM, I received an email notification indicating departure was delayed until 8:50 PM on 3/16/2018. A short time later, the status of the flight reverted to an on-time departure, as the inbound CRJ-200 aircraft flying the flight landed at LGA at 7:35 PM. At 7:47 PM, I received a second email notification indicating the departure time was delayed until 8:20 PM on 3/16/2018. All initial passengers boarded the aircraft and the cabin door closed shortly before the initial scheduled departure time of 8:15 PM. The aircraft pushed back from the hardstand at which we boarded and began to taxi toward the departure runway.

When the aircraft was parallel to the western concourse of Terminal C (the higher numbered C gates), it came to an abrupt stop and the interphone chimed. Never a good sign. The FA picked up the interphone. I heard her say: “are you kidding me?” The flight deck then announced that we would be returning to the hardstand in order to board passengers who had failed to board with the rest of us during the initial boarding process. When we returned to the hard stand, only two additional passengers boarded. There was no indication that either of them had Medallion status. Apparently, these two passengers got to the gate, a bus gate, expecting the flight to depart at 8:50 PM. The remaining 43-odd passengers, myself included, were not under this misapprehension. After the aircraft returned to the hard stand, the aircraft had to take on more fuel to compensate for that which the aircraft burned off taxiing to the runway and then returning to the hardstand. Ultimately, we arrived in BGR over one hour late because of the inability of two passengers to get to the departure gate when all the other 43-odd passengers knew it was time to board.

Have any of you ever encountered an aircraft returning to the gate and taking a delay in order to board additional passengers? Could the captain have refused to return to the hardstand in this instance?

I have had the misfortune of arriving at the bus gates at LGA (C12 and C13) 14 minutes prior to scheduled departure time only for the gate agent to tell me that the flight is closed and there is nothing he or she can do to enable me to board the flight, even though the aircraft is clearly still on the ground with the door open at that point. It seems nonsensical to delay and inconvenience over 95% of the passengers on a flight to benefit less than 5% of the passengers on the flight who couldn't manage to board at the appropriate time. If gate agents took pity on the two passengers who failed to board with the rest of us, they should have put them in a cab to JFK in order to catch the next flight to BGR, which was scheduled to depart over an hour later at 9:30 PM and was behind schedule, rather than inconveniencing the rest of us. Do any of you feel differently?

Perhaps this story belongs in the current "Worst Reason for a Delay" thread.

Mountain Explorer

I think the real question is why did the plane refuel? It is not because of taxiing. Taxiing uses negligible fuel. It is not because of 2 additional passengers. When the plane was initially fueled, it would have been done on the assumption of a full flight.

Without the refuel, the delay should have been on the order of 15 minutes. For the last flight of the night, that's fairly reasonable and I would support the decision DL/Endeavor made (especially since there was some Delta-created confusion about when/where the flight would depart)

exwannabe

I have a lot of sympathy for OP. I take great care to be on time and get pissed off at people who think they can arrive late and inconvenience those of us who can follow a schedule.

That said, we do not know the full details. And DL has more complicated issues to juggle.

Mountain Explorer

That seems rather harsh. In this case, DL sent an email saying that the flight would depart late. At some time later, they retracted that email.

It is very possible that these 2 passengers honestly believed they were on time

Paplover

My favorite - Original plane from SLC-SAT had a mechanical so they flew a replacement in from LAX. That plane had a broken fuel level gauge in the left wing. They needed to top it up for the flight and they had to know the current level to know how much to put in. I guess planes are not like cars with an auto shutoff. So they had to pull the mechanic from the original broken plane to manually measure the fuel level, but he had trouble getting that done. Eventually got a reading and then there was a discussion with the pilot whether it was gallons, liters or pounds. Eventually they got it sorted out, fully fueled but about a total 4 hour delay, 15 minutes before the pilots timed out at about 2 AM.

mpheels

Most frustrating round trip with delays after arrival in both directions a few years ago. First flight, BWI-RDU on an Delta Connection ERJ-145. A few minutes before we landed, Delta received a threat against the flight that landed right before ours. We had to taxi out as far from the terminal as possible and wait for the other plane to be cleared. Pilot told us it was a security issue, but he didn't have any other information. We waited for ninety minutes before getting the all clear to taxi back to the terminal and deplane. GA was tight lipped, but a quick google found local news stories with all the details. On my return to BWI, also on an ERJ-145, we diverted to RIC due to summer storms in the DC area and waited there for more than an hour since we then had to content with air traffic congestion. We finally get to BWI, and sit at the gate for another hour while the GA figures out how to align the jet bridge with the plane, while the FA patiently coaches her through the process. All told, I was scheduled for two flights that are usually less then 60 minutes from gate to gate, but ended up spending close to six hours trapped in a tiny tin can over the course of a three day weekend.