Leo Tolstoy famously wrote, “All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”
Similarly, one might say that all on-time flights are alike; every delayed flight is delayed in its own way.
Anyone who travels even semi-regularly has at least one bizarre story to tell. Sometimes the stories even make the news, as happened last week to a flight which was delayed due to a “crew disagreement.” (Allegedly, a flight attendant actually told passengers the pilot was “unstable.”)
Now, I haven’t had a crew fight experience. Usually it’s the run-of-the-mill stuff — weather, mechanical delays, and the always popular “air traffic control.” I have had plenty of flights delayed due to crews “timing out,” which means that some or all of them are over the maximum time they can work in a day, week or month. Once, too, a flight attendant stormed angrily off a plane after being told her paperwork wasn’t completed, telling us, “Good luck getting to Omaha.” (We made it, eventually.)
Seating issues delay flights more often than one would think. Once, at San Jose, a gate agent cheerfully assigned exit-row seats to a late-arriving family of five with young children, which prompted a complicated musical chairs game on board to sort things out. A flight attendant angrily told me later that the ground agents did this “all the time” (probably an exaggeration), figuring once they got people boarded it wasn’t their problem.
There are also fuel issues: having an aircraft without enough fuel, or too much fuel. In Cincinnati, I had been chatting with a flight attendant who knew I was in the industry. He told me, during a delay to remove excess fuel, that the pilot had angrily told ground crew they’d made a mistake and, “We’re lightly loaded, it’s a short flight, and I don’t want to blow up when we land at O’Hare.” Fine, take all the time you need.
Location plays a part, too. The further a flight is from an airline’s hubs and potential replacement parts and crew, the more likely a delay is going to snowball. A friend of a friend was stuck in Africa for a few days after her plane had a fuel leak, followed by an oil leak. Eventually, the airline had to fly in a mechanic.
But even when you think you’ve heard them all, there’s always a new one. Last week, a client was traveling from San Francisco to Hong Kong on a United nonstop flight, which was originally delayed about 90 minutes due to a problem with the lighting inside the plane. Fair enough; it’s a 14- hour flight and passengers need working lights.
After the plane boarded and started taxiing to the runway, air traffic delays meant it was still on the ground when the crew timed-out, so they had to return to the gate and await another crew. At this point, passengers were advised the flight would be about six hours late.
But wait, it gets better. After a new crew was found and ready to go, they decided the food had been on board too long and was now “unsafe” to eat. So they had to make a call and cater the flight again, which resulted in another hour-plus delay. The plane finally took off about eight hours after its scheduled departure.
Now, one would think that if food could only be on the plane for a certain number of hours that someone would be aware. So either that’s wrong or United was more focused on the crew issues until it was too late.
No doubt readers have their own bizarre stories. Please share them. Misery loves company. And laughter beats crying.
Janice Hough is a California-based travel agent a travel blogger and a part-time comedy writer. A frequent flier herself, she’s been doing battle with airlines, hotels, and other travel companies for over three decades. Besides writing for Travelers United, Janice has a humor blog at Leftcoastsportsbabe.com (Warning, the political and sports humor therein does not represent the views of anyone but herself.)
