These Are Your Most Infuriating Flight Delay Horror Stories

At the time, our son lived in DC; our daughter in NY. My wife and I are in Tulsa.

We’re flying Thursday afternoon to NY for a weekend celebration of father’s day and my son’s birthday—he was my father’s day present 25 years ago. I digress. He’s taking a train from DC to meet us at daughter’s to go out for a Big Deal dinner Friday night (Michelin 2-star) before the rest of our weekend fun.

My wife and I fly after work and are routed through Chicago. Upon landing, it’s Bedlam. People crushed throughout the terminal. We’re told that there are weather delays up and down the entire East Coast. Our flight is cancelled. We’re on standby for the next one. No problem-we get to NY in plenty of time! It’s still just Thursday! The flight we were on standby for? It comes and goes without us or anyone else from the standby list getting on. We’re told we’re on standby for the next flight or we can go to customer service.

The customer service line has more people in it than there are souls in my wife’s hometown, but after not getting even a whiff of standby, we’re in line.

Time marches on. We’re now told that the next flight is full, 100%, and we’re not getting on it, either. The airline is happy to put us on a flight the next day, but because there are so many ahead of us, the flight isn’t until Friday evening and we’ll miss Son’s birthday dinner in NY.

We stay in line.

As we’re in line, it occurs to me that we should rent a car and drive to NY. At this point, driving would get us there before flying! I try to call the toll free number, but between poor reception, loud terminal, and accents, there’s no hope. We eventually get 5g service, get on-line, and order a car from the first national rent-a-car vendor that eventually loads into the phone. Boom. Car reserved, it says.

We make our way from the customer service line to the out of terminal car rental. Customer ahead of us at the counter is HOT. He’s screaming things to the poor counter worker that I wouldn’t say in a bar fight.

Dude is NOT getting a car—they’re all out.

We keep cool, even though they said they’re out of cars. After all, I’ve been told I have a reservation…

The internet never lies.

We get to the front of the line. I ask the counter worker who just got screamed at how his day was going. We laugh. Both of our days suck. One worse than the other.

As it turns out, the reason they were out of cars was because some asshole had internet-reserved the last car they had in stock. That would be me. It’s my car. It hasn’t been cleaned since the last rental, but we can have it. The internet thing worked!

We get the car and, true to his word, it wasn’t cleaned. There was a piece of cheesecake in the center console, but no gas in the tank. Gas, at the time, was a bit over $6/gal at the had-to-stop-there station in the neighborhood outside the airport grounds. We fill up.

I drive the first shift out of Chicagoland, 2 hours. My wife takes the next 6 as we talk to be sure she stays awake and I take the last 4 when she had to sleep. There were more hijinks, what with the prepaid toll thing not working, but we’re at least making good time despite construction. Nobody is on the road over night.

Seems like Pennsylvania never ends! Sunrise over the Delaware Water Gap sure was pretty.

So, we work all day to fly to Chicago, spend a few frustrating hours in and then out of Chicago’s AA terminal, drive 12 hours from Chicago to NY, but we get the car returned, get to the hotel, and then meet up with the kids.

I don’t remember much of the dinner. I just remember being glad we made it.