Not really a delay, but this morning out of ATL, captain says we can't push back b/c they can't get the cargo door shut on the MD-88 and had to call maintenance. A few minutes and a loud thud go by and Captain comes back on to say "turns out that the fix was to slam it harder. we're backing out now"

Man oh man those old MD-80 series in the fleet are really, really showing their age. Those CS100 can't get here soon enough.

My friend is an A330 Captain. Short hold up once he said due to buzzy sound in a gate checked bag.. the school marmy type was called up and walked down the aisle to go and open bag for inspection. He said the ground crew thought it hilarious.

Seat 1B's DL record shows that from now on he will always be #2 on the FC upgrade list. :p

Pilots are finishing up their meal and will be here within 30 minutes.I get it they need to eat, but feel saying pilots are delayed due to their inbound flight being delayed would have been better.

Some years ago in a US airport (forget which - I was in transit to a long-haul flight and after a while all transit airports seem the same!). We were told that the reason for our delay was that the flight crew were transferring from another flight "but can't find our gate".

The pilots can't find the gate.

THAT inspired confidence....

lol

Last week we were flying out of JFK. We had a fairly long layover, and I noticed the update on my phone about two hours before the flight was scheduled to leave that the departure gate had been switched from 42 to 47.

Long story short, we arrived at the gate about 45 minutes before departure. The gate agent starts making all the normal announcements before boarding, but we never actually start boarding...and we're past the anticipated time to start heading onto the plane. Finally the gate agent announces that we're waiting for the flight attendants to arrive. This announcement is made a couple more times.

Finally the flight attendants arrive. They'd apparently been there the whole time, waiting down at gate 42.

Salt Lake in the E concourse with all the doors and no policing after the boarding pass scan. People are NOT happy when they show up in Rapid City, SD and not in Grand Rapids, MI... or vice versa.


I work at an airport and I also have a little airplane. I was out fly8ing little airplane when I heard this from the captain of everyone's least favorite ULCC "Yeah ground, we need to head back to the gate.. apparently we left a couple bags behind" "Alright taxi back to the gate via blah blah blah" AAY comes back after adding their bags and the tower controller says "Hey welcome back! How many bags did ya forget?" "A cart full... twelve or more". So that was a half hour delay on top of the 15+ hour delay that flight had the night before from a mechanical issue. Don't fly ULCC, kids!

Flew for the Air Force for almost 25 years. This is the equivelant of "use the BIG hammer" or "get another roll of speed tape"!

Once we had to switch an aircraft on a TATL flight because a few decals were missing after plane was cleaned/refreshed. These were stickers inside the overhead compartment that hardly anyone ever reads or notices!

Another time, my flight was cancelled because one of the FA lost her voice (apparently ability to shout out instructions is a safety requirement).

Arrived early at SBN for a SBN-DTW flight and the plane was at the gate already and apparently empty. Then the gate agent and crew arrived. But then nothing further as the scheduled departure approached. The gate agent was on the phone a lot. Boarding started after a considerable delay. The pilot apologized for the delay explaining that it was the wrong plane. Same model, just not the one their system said was to be used. Must have been a lot of red tape to get through to update their records, or perhaps they spent a lot of time trying to figure out what happened to the plane that should have been there. Then another delay at the end of the runway before takeoff. That was caused by a malfunctioning flight data recorder. We finally departed after the pilot got permission to fly without it. I still made my DTW-PDX connection.

More recently, a SDF-DTW flight pushed back on time but while taxiing to the runway the pilot got word from ATC that due to a storm in the way, a new route around the storm would be required and was enough longer that more fuel was needed. So back to a gate for more fuel. All Delta gates were busy so we went to some other airline's gate. Then waited for a fuel truck. And waited. The captain was good about keeping us updated on the [non]progress but was clearly exasperated. Finally after nearly an hour two fuel trucks showed up. Didn't make my DTW-PDX flight this time and spent the night at the DTW Westin.

Finally, on a United Express YVR-PDX flight a couple of passengers were musicians that had bought seats for their guitars. The crew were worried about the guitars just sitting unsecured at their seats. So they moved the guitars to the last row and secured them with cargo netting. An operation that took nearly an hour in total. They gave everyone free drinks as an apology for the delay.

I was once on a delayed flight where the pilot actually admitted to having forgotten to set his alarm. OTOH, I suppose he could have been kidding.