While eight Democratic senators might have folded and made a deal with the Republicans to end the longest federal government shutdown in American history, there isn’t an end in sight for the FAA-mandated 10% reduction in flights. The Federal Aviation Administration hasn’t rescinded the emergency order intended to reduce the workload on understaffed and unpaid air traffic controller facilities. According to Politico, Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy will only lift the restriction when it’s safe to do so.
We asked our readers on Friday, the start of the flight cuts, for the most frustrating stories about flight delays and cancellations up to that point. The comment section was filled with anecdotes that detailed the struggles of trying to catch a flight during crises, such as the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the COVID-19 pandemic. There were also tales of absurd scenarios that illustrate how ill-considered commercial aviation can still be. Without further ado, here are your maddening stories:
Let’s not forget Southwest’s December to remember
Southwest, Christmas 2022. Due to severe winter weather their crew scheduling system was overwhelmed and crashed. Our flight was 1 of nearly 17,000 Southwest flights cancelled that week. The earliest they could re-book us was 3 days later. That same day my mom came down with COVID which meant she had to isolate during these “bonus” days with her grandchildren. As bad as it was, we didn’t absolutely need to get home and were staying with family anyway. Lots of other families that week had it much worse than we did!
Submitted by: Stephen.
It’s Newark or nowhere
1984. Delayed out of Newark 23 hours. We were put up in a nearby hotel overlooking a junkyard. No dinner for us: we weren’t allowed in the dining room without suit and tie. We got the last of the vending machines. But ultimately, the Cyclades made up for it and well beyond.
Submitted by: Ed Glorius
First-come, first-served
50 years ago. Air Mali flagged Aeroflot turboprop flying from Mopti, Mali to the capital, Bamako. Grass runway with a terminal building about the size of a 7-11. The deal was, Air Mali would sell open tickets for the route with no thought of seat counts or any of that boring airline stuff. So what happened is you arrived at the Airport before the theoretical flight was set to occur and waited. The plane would appear in the sky and land on the strip and taxi to a point a couple hundred feet from where the crowd of potential passengers were anxiously waiting. They never shut down the engines. The passenger door opened, stairs were placed and then you were off, running, waddling, as fast as your luggage allowed, because only the winners of this race got a seat on the plane. It took me two tries on sequential days.
Submitted by: redseca2
Two strikes, a plane crash and a seven-flight return
I have an epic one from back in the late-1990s. I used to vacation up in PEI, Canada – one of the best places to recharge your batteries. Lived in Charlotte and flew up there to Charlottetown, PEI. I knew Air Canada and they were set and I think United were set to go on strike during my vacation. Once they went on strike, and this is before the Internet could fix everything with flights, I made a trip to the smallest airport I’ve ever seen on the island and had to make plans.
In the end, including standbys and last-second changes, it went like this: Charlottetown, Halifax, Montreal, Toronto, Boston, Philadelphia, Greensboro, Charlotte.
Two airlines on strike, and a massive line of storms during some of those flights turned what was supposed to be a few hours of flying into over 2 days. Highlights? In PHL, because of the storms and strikes, USAirways was setting people up in hotels.They sent me to the Four Seasons! And I was there for, maybe 5 hours because I needed to get back there early for standby to anything in NC. And in Boston, all of our luggage was left on the tarmac during a downpour. Fun times. My sleepless night in Philly was spent drying clothes in a beautiful hotel room.
And that was when the SwissAir flight crashed outside of Halifax. Friends heard Halifax, knew I was heading there and thought I was on that flight Late-1990s communication meant I had to get to a landlines and internet computer to let people know I was fine.
Submitted by: Xavier96
Someone forgot about operations security
I was coming home from Afghanistan on emergency leave due to a death in the family. I was on the ramp on a C-17 when the flight got cancelled. We found out it was because one of the other passengers was blabbing on Facebook about troop movements.
Submitted by: half man half bear half pig
Operational meltdown compounds winter storm cancellations
It’s February 2022. I am heading back home from a whole week at King of the Hammers in California. I capped off my trip with a great swim in the Lake Perris State Recreation Area, and got my favorite seat rows aboard a CRJ-700, right next to the engines.
Unfortunately, as I was in line for security in Palm Springs, I got a notification that, due to cascading failures within American Airlines in the aftermath of a major winter storm, flights were getting canceled. I wasn’t the only one who got this notification, because I heard a bunch of deep sighs in the line.
Our CRJ took off and just barely made the connection to Phoenix after an equipment delay. From there, American Airlines had a total meltdown. The winter storm had long passed, but now American Airlines had pilots and flight attendants in the wrong cities at the wrong times, and thus, few crews to fly planes anywhere. Thousands of people piled into Phoenix, unable to actually reach their final destinations. Some people said they had taken six flights in a desperate attempt to get home, and all it got them was waiting in a 6-hour line to get a hotel and food voucher.
So many people were stranded that American Airlines actually ran out of those vouchers before we even entered the line. People began crying, visibly. Some folks missed funerals and other important events. Many people were angry at AA staff, even though the meltdown wasn’t their fault.
I ended up sleeping in a sleazy motel, which left me with tons of bed bug bites.
Submitted by: Mercedes Streeter
Baking for hours on the Vegas tarmac
August 2004, Las Vegas tarmac. Mechanical fault with the plane, but they kept us in our seats. For almost five hours. You learn some things about airplane HVAC in times like those. Namely that they’re not designed to operate at ground level. They rely on having much colder air at 35,000 feet and only being on the ground for a little while before taking off again. They only started passing out water after two hours when someone got belligerent. And they let us off the plane only when someone went down with heat stroke. The final insult was that, when the plane was finally ready, we learned that it’s crew had hit it’s daily limit and we’d have to wait for a new one to show up.
Submitted by: Give Me Tacos or Give Me Death
Flying home for Thanksgiving in 2001
Thanksgiving, 2001. 9/11 happened 2 months previous. I decided to take a red-eye from Seattle back home figuring, I’ll sleep on the plane, it won’t be crowded, it’ll be great. Flight is scheduled to leave at like 1 am, getting home by around 6-7am. Perfect.
Flight gets delayed. 1 hour. 2 hours. 3 hours. Finally on the plane at 3:30. Getting home at more like 10-11, all good. The flight is uneventful. As we cross the Mississippi, the pilot starts warning us that there’s heavy ground fog, we may not be able to land, but we’re going to keep going because it should clear up. It does not clear up. We circle the airport a couple times then fly back to St. Louis.
When we land we are told we have like 5 minutes to transfer to another flight across the airport. I sprint across the airport and make it. The flight takes off and we land in Indy an hour or so later, fog now cleared. My plan to sleep on the flight failed.
It’s now 1:00 and this is my first flight since 9/11 so as I get off the plane no one is waiting for me. I make my way down to baggage claim but my luggage is still in St Louis, I head outside to wait for my parents only to be confronted by some very serious army guys in full battle gear who tell me cars are not allowed to wait anymore and I need to clear the area. My parents find me, I fall asleep and then proceed to sleep through Thanksgiving dinner, having been awake for well over 24 hours.
Submitted by: Buckfiddious
Shutting the government down to deny people affordable healthcare
Someone’s future answer: That time my flight got cancelled because a bunch of people thought shutting down the government was better than letting Americans have access to affordable healthcare.
Submitted by: engineerthefuture
