BootsnAll Travel Community

What is the longest ever time you ever had to wait for a flight, train or bus?

My worst is 8 hours delay on a flight from Tunisia to London. And my worst train delay was a 5 hour delay on a sleeper from bucharest to Sofiya. However I don't get delayed very often, most of the time I am quite lucky.

Incidentally two of friends recently had a flight from Cancun delayed about 24 hours, but that was not so bad since the airline put them in a super-expensive luxury hotel - free of charge.

On an Amtrak trip from Minneapolis to Portland, the train stopped without explanation in eastern Montana for nine hours. That was a drag.

This wasn't exactly a delay, but the SNCF announced a strike to begin 36 hours before I was to fly out of Paris back in 1998, when I lived in Barcelona. My credit card was over the limit, I had $10 in cash to my name, and one day remaining on a rail pass. I had to camp in de Gaulle airport, the ninth circle of hell, for a day and a half.

Was stranded in Philadelphia for about 24 hours once when US Airways canceled my connecting flight. It was agonozing how they did it: First delay an hour, then two, then four. Then finally at 3 a.m. "sorry, flight's cancelled. Everyone have a good night!"

No help finding a hotel. No money for a hotel. No meal. And no help with getting another flight in order to make connections.

I love air travel.

My longest layover was 8 hours in Seoul on a flight from Chicago to Bangkok. It was nice, because I got to get out into the city, where I'd never been before, but it made for the very longest day of my life which, ten years later, has yet to be bested.

My longest EVER delay was......On Time....

In an unbelievable record, I have actually had flights that have left early and have NEVER waited for a slow flight!

JINXXXXXXXXXXXed myself just now.
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I think I've had three overnight delays, the longest of which was 23 hours.

72 hours coming back from South America a few years back. And, to top it off, I was delayed 48 hours on my way there.

We were stuck in Chicago for 24 hours once. Well, actually it was a lot more than 24 hours. We lived in Ethiopia and had a 35 hour flight from there to Idaho where my parents lived. Our twins were 18 months old, so I packed enough diapers and stuff for about 45 hours - thinking we would have plenty to get home.

So - we arrived into Chicago after 23 hours of transit and had an 8-hour layover for our short, 3-hour flight to Idaho. As soon as we got off the flight from Europe we checked the screen, saw that our flight to Boise was on time from the normal gate, and headed over to the kids' area to let our boys play.

Seven hours later, we headed to our gate - and they told us the flight was cancelled!! Apparently, the plane we had to get on had mechanical problems and they had known it for 13 hours!!! Which means, of course, that when we checked the monitor seven hours ago, they had known the flight was cancelled, but hadn't put it on the monitor! The people had rescheduled us onto a flight with another airline and were frantically looking for us - but because the monitor had indicated our flight was on, we were over in the kiddie area. Needless to say, we were FURIOUS!

We ended up having to wait until the flight the next evening, which meant a night in a hotel. Of course, airports are near anywhere, so we couldn't get to a store to buy more diapers and there were NONE in the airport stores. We stretched our meager supply as far as we could, but there was no way we would make it to Idaho. I called my mom and said, "Meet us at the airport WITH DIAPERS!"

As we hung out at the airport kiddie area again the next day, I was able to bum a couple diapers off another parent, so we ended up making it OK. But I NEVER, EVER dreamed it could take so long to get to Boise from Chicago!!

24 hours coming back from Europe in October 2001 when a lot of flights were being canceled because of 9/11. I was booked on Icelandair from Frankfurt - Keflavik - Baltimore. I called the day before I was scheduled to leave Frankfurt and they told me the first flight was okay, but the Keflavik - Baltimore flight would be delayed a day. They gave me the option of waiting in Frankfurt or taking my scheduled flight and spending the night in Reykjavik at their expense. So naturally I went for the latter option.

Regrettably, Icelandair ended their service from BWI early this year. I also flew with them the first time I went to Europe on my own, back in the days when they only flew to Luxembourg and then put you on a bus to Frankfurt (or other points, I think). I always had a soft spot for them because of that.

I lied earlier, I had a 26 hour delay from Minneapolis through Chicago. Minneapolis - Chicago in January is just a stupid idea. I could have driven the 500 miles to my destination much faster, but they just kept slowly pushing the delay back, then when we finally got on the plane, the told us a fuel line froze, so that took a while to thaw.

6 hour delay for a one hour flight from switzerland to london

About 40 hours trying to get from Kyiv to Chicago. This included sitting on the plane on the tarmac for about 6 hours and then again for about 3 hours.

My longest delay was probably flying home on January 1st this year. They kept delaying my flight in Miami untill it got cancelled. Was able to fly back to Pittsburgh through Dallas the next day. Came home 24 hours later then planned.

But the most interesting delay was coming back to Calcutta from Siliguri and the train stopped. After talking to fellow passengers they told us it was only a 3 hour delay. I just absolutely loved that perspective. It always made me laugh when I got back to the Netherlands and people would get so upset when the train was delayed for 5 minutes.

Staying in Filadelfia, Paraguay. Waited for a bus to go to Bolivia. The bus was supposed to arrive 'manana'. After 5 days we gave up and went back to Asuncion. So, yeah, I guess the longest delay was 5 days.

12 hours in Cuba. I was to leave at 8AM and left at 8PM. However, it was very long because I had only two one dollar bills in my pocket and in Cuba, my credit cards and traveller checks were useless. Therefore, 2 dollars couldn't get me out of the airport nor could it get me any food nor could it get me anything to drink. I had planned to eat breakfast onboard and it was hot..

Three days...three WHOLE days...in Columbus, OH. About 5 years ago, I spent Valentine's Day in San Diego. On the flight back to the East Coast, my 2 hour layover in Ohio suddenly became a 3 day ordeal, including a miserable stay at a Homestead Hotel. With no room service. Or restaurant within walking distance.

Mmmm...vending machine dinners!

8 hours on a Chicago to Seattle flight. Actually my flight was delayed like 10 hours but I got on standby for the flight that was scheduled to leave later then my flight but actually left a couple hours earlier. I ended up getting to my hotel in Seattle at 2am and had to wake up at 6am and give an all day presentation. Fun times.

I've had a remarkably delay free travel history. I think the worst was one from when I was a kid. We were slightly delayed by bad weather coming in to Salt Lake City, so we had to run through the airport to get our connecting flight to Atlanta, which we just barely made the final boarding call.

Our plane then proceeded to sit on the tarmac for the next three hours. Not because of the weather, but apparently because one of the engines was having issues.

Luckily our next connection, from Atlanta to Nassau, wasn't until the next morning, so all it cost us was our planned trip to the coke museum.

More recently, I had a relatively minor delay, but at a bad enough time to make it excrutiating. It was at the tail end of a 17 hour layover at Heathrow (arrived 6:30am, departed 11:30pm), where we'd been too jetlagged to do much. So the extra hour and a bit waiting for our flight to finally board just about killed me.

My longest train delay ever was about 12 hours going from Thessalonika to Sophia. Just after we crossed the Bulgarian border, the train died. A team of workers came to work on it, but around sunset, they just left, no explanation. Some time in the middle of the night, our train got hooked up to the next one coming through an we arrived in Sophia the next morning. To add to the fun, when I left Bulgaria two weeks later, I got detained because I didn't have a stamp for that night's lodging on my tourist card.

As far as planes go, I've had a couple of overnight delays, but my most interesting one was just a few hours. Flying from Sendai to Hiroshima, the departure time was first listed as 30 minutes late, it got updated every 15 minutes or so until it reached and hour and a half, at which point, they just changed it to "soon." We left two hours later; once the plane was airborne, the pilot announced that he wasn't sure if we were going to be able to land in Hiroshima and that we could end up in either Fukuoka or Osaka. Fortunately, we did land where we were supposed to as my bike was parked in the employee lot there. In a country where people pull out their cell phones to call and let people know the train's going to be 2 minutes late, it caused quite a stir.

You could say it was a week.

I misread my plane ticket and missed my flight from Samoa to Tonga. I had to wait a week for the next flight from Samoa to Tonga.