delay/cancellation

Qantas Airways (Australia’s market leader) is obviously doing so well in the travel business, it’s decided to move in on the lucrative ‘torture of suspects’ business as well. Qantas’ opening foray into this market would appear to be the use of ‘sleep deprivation tactics’ and I was lucky enough to be one of the airline’s […]

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None of the following vignettes really raise up to a level of “hell,” but they were certainly inconveniences. The first: In 1977 I was invited to a conference in Lynchburg, VA for high school students. My father arranged the flight through his employer (AT&T). When I went to the airport to fly home, Piedmont had […]

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I decided to visit my family in La Verne, California the week between Christmas and New Year’s Day. There are several airports in the Los Angeles area, with Ontario International Airport being the closest one. I booked Delta flight 4756 from SLC to ONT the morning of Christmas Eve. Other than sitting next to a […]

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I was on DL 5982, which was slowly delayed in increments, as the airline apparently attempted to wait for weather to worsen to cover for a mechanical failure. Eventually the flight was cancelled, and it took hours to get rebooked and put up in a hotel overnight. The next day, on DL 3957, the plane suffered… another mechanical […]

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This past summer I was flying with my family back home to Texas from Cancun, Mexico. We arrived at the airport and turned all our papers in when we got the news that our plane broke down and we had to wait 8 hours to get a new one (it was a small airline company). […]

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In 2004, I was living in Pittsburgh, PA and attempting to come home to Joplin, MO for Christmas. It was the first time I had ever flown alone. My mother booked me a Delta flight from Pitt to Kansas City connecting in Cincinnati on December 23rd. I was dropped off at the Pittsburgh airport by […]

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Earlier this year I made two business trips to Europe to taste wine. The first trip, to Tuscany in Italy, was idyllic as it always is. Yes, the ash from the volcano in Iceland hit the skies while I was there and I had to spend another week in Florence before I could get back, […]

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I thought my trip to Dominican Republic from Detroit on American Airlines was bad due to delays that ended up getting us there 10 hours later than scheduled. However, that proved to be good since it took me 3 days and hundreds of dollars more to get home. We start with the return leg from […]

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The year is 1981. My first ship has just been decommissioned and my wife, 2 kids (ages 2 and 1) and I are flying from Portland, Oregon to Hartford, Connecticut to spend some leave time with our families before reporting to a new ship in Newport, R.I. Our flight is scheduled to depart Portland at […]

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I was flying from Fort Lauderdale to New Orleans July 4th weekend to visit my family. July 4th weekend is the Essence Music Festival in New Orleans, so many of the passengers on my flight were heading to NOLA to enjoy the festival. I board the plane and take my seat and everything seems to […]

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This happened just last summer. Oh eternal bliss… It started out when I was going back to the States from Russia. Instead of flying Aeroflot, Delta or AA, we finally decided to take a spin on United which turned out to be the only good American airline we have flown (KLM still trumps most lines, […]

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I don’t know if this counts as a “Flight From Hell” – it might be better placed on a website called “Vacations From Hell.” But since every one of the problems was caused by American Airlines, I think it is relevant. Please note that I am not making any of this up. I know it […]

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