“American Airlines flight 382 was supposed to leave Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport at 1.45pm on Friday for Oklahoma City, but didn’t take off until 10.48pm,” as reported by the DailyMail. This story is my worst nightmare and something that I always pray won’t happen to me when I am flying especially when I’m with my family and the kids! What would you do if you were stuck on a plane for 9 hours?
30 Minute American Flight Takes 9 Hours!
According to the report, there was icy weather that caused the delay and “issues with both the plane’s pressure indicator and the parking assist.” There were reports of people getting sick, acting out, raiding the drink fridges, shouting and more. Honestly, sounds so bad to me! I know when I have ever had to sit on the runway for even 30 minutes, I start to loose it a little and get claustrophobic! I can’t even image being in this situation.
“According to the airline, the nine-hour delay did not violate the Department of Transportation’s three-hour limit because the plane was not actually held on the tarmac.”
Bottom Line
This is one of the many risks of flying. What would you do if this happened to you? Do you plan ahead for situations like this just in case? If so, what do you do? All I can come up with is stay calm, bring extra snacks and entertainment.
About The Weekly Flyer
The Weekly Flyer writes about travel from a business traveler perspective. He travels the world every week accumulating points and miles along the way.
Sign up for Email || Twitter || Facebook |
Hotel Offers || Airline Offers || Bank Offers || Cash Back Offers
I was on this flight on Friday. There are so many details left out, but too many to list. While weather was the cause of the initial delay, it was AA’s comedy of errors that delayed this flight beyond the initial 4 hours due to weather. I boarded at 1:15p and we landed in OKc at 11:20p…long day
“the nine-hour delay did not violate the Department of Transportation’s three-hour limit because the plane was not actually held on the tarmac”
The issue for passengers is not where the plane is located, but being on a plane for ten hours when you boarded expecting one hour. Especially if the gate is within shouting distance. What is wrong with letting the passengers off while the airplane gets their act together? Southwest, in my experience, manages to do just that.
Claustrophobia is a very real thing. It is utterly irrational, divided into two types (fear of being crushed and fear of suffocation), inherited to some degree, and is set off by weird things like being trapped in an elevator or a car wash. “Trapped” is the operative word. Trapped on a plane works too.
The three hour rule should apply wherever the plane is sitting and doing nothing.
I wasn’t on this flight but flew AA/US the entire weekend (was supposed to be doing a mileage from that started late morning 2/27 and ended early morning 2/28). Let’s just say that 1 LAX hotel and an entire day and change later I made it back to LGA. Original routing: LGA-PHL-PHX-SMF-PHX-PHL-LGA. Flight delayed in LGA (for no real reason) by an hour and a half which made me miss the rest. AA Club rep took 2 hours trying to rebook into this routing: PHL-LAX-SMF-PHX-PHL-LGA (starting early evening 2/27 ending late night 2/28). Ended up with PHL-LAX-SMF-PHX-SLC-CLT-LGA (returning 3/1). Didn’t have a finalized itinerary until I landed in PHX. It was quite a few days.
I ended up not having any issues this day either – but I was lucky. I saw a ton of flights cancelled to NYC and all of the airport (EWR, JFK, LGA) hotels were sold out that night.
Hi Bob – It’s a scary thing. I can’t imagine sitting on a plane for 10 hours. Not saying I’d pull a Steven Slater, but…
Matt – Dude! Details. Details. Details. Come forth with them. Didn’t know we had a reader on that plane. How did it really go down?