Oh, I just remembered the flight from Raleigh that was cancelled when the guy guiding the "gangplank" out to the plane hit the nose and dented it. We spent the night in Raleigh, and they replaced the entire nose cone of the plane.

Patrick, that's almost like my first story. Maybe it was the same guy operating the jetway, or gangplank as you call it. He needs to get a new job.

We were delayed an hour on the runway last Friday when the plane blew a fuse. I'm a nervous flier and was perfectly happy to sit there except that the person they got on the plane to solve the problem looked like my great uncle Herb, was not wearing a uniform and could be seen reading what looked like a car manual while standing in the open cockpit door. We did take off, they gave us free drinks, etc. I would have been much happier however if they had taken us off the plane and then lied to me that it was a totally different plane.

A very obviously drunk man(how he got on, was a another question) could not find his way back to his seat . They had to take him off the plane and off load his luggage...took a whole hour, because we were just getting ready to push off.

I just flew USAirways from Philadelphia to LAX. The flight was delayed for one hour because one of the flight attendants was missing. He eventually showed up.

Well, I just was overjoyed at the Portland OR airport last October when we were told go from the fartherest gate to the nearest gate-so walked backed toward security again. Than suddenly our flight to Sacramento was cancelled. Why? Because Alaska Airlines decided to use the plane that was suppose to be flying to Sacramento (which was my flight) to fly passengers to LasVegas. The passengers to Sacramento were told " the plane that WAS going to fly to Las Vegas will be your plane to Sacramento BUT there are mechanical problems. We have ordered the part,, when it arrives we will have it installed blah blah blah. Hours later we left for Sacramento. If I had arrived five minutes later in Sacramento the last Super Shuttle that I was planning to use to get home would have been gone. Fortunatly I was not stuck in Sacramento. The Super Shuttle driver waited while I ran back to get my luggage and all was ok. Did get home that night. But still wonder why getting passengers to Las Vegas (it was their plane that had the mechanical problem) were more important that the passengers that were flying to Sacramento. Especially since about 50% of them were business travels, went to Portland for the day and than planned on returning to Sacramento that evening.

I was delayed at some airport, though for the life of me I can't recall where, and the reason given was that the cleaning crew hadn't arrived yet to clean the plane.

Had a flight from Vegas to Chicago that they had to split into 2 groups to go on 2 smaller planes - "will take off 10 minutes later". Knew that wouldn't happen because there was no plane at the gate. Plane was still in LA, then in route discovered they forgot the food. What, bags of peanuts? They went back to LA for "the food". Needless to say we took off 3 hours later.

How about a not so silly reason. Several years ago on a Frontier Airlines flight out of Omaha I was on a commuter propeller plane which was very large. Just before take-off a nose cone shot off of one of the propellers and struck the airplane. Then we all got a complimentary drink back at the airport lounge, then hearded back into the same plane. Oh was I a fool for acking like a sheep. I was young, dumb and invinsible then.

USAir, a cold day..arrived late at Philly, flight had not yet boarded. Put on bus to the plane. Sat in bus a long time...flight attendenat stuck her head out of plane and yelled " I am freezing my *** off in here. Where is everybody?" Turns out the crew had all gone home and we had to wait until somebody came back to fly the plane.

Another time: delay because somebody reported seeing a snake on the plane.

I remember another one. It was the more or less typical Friday afternoon chaos at the United and American ticket counters at Laguardia. Both airlines had cancelled some of their flights to Chicago, and all the others were running late. There were hordes of people running between the two airlines' counters trying to get on the earliest flight available.

I asked agents at both airlines what the trouble was this time, and both told me it was thunderstorms/bad weather in Chicago. So awhile later, after I got rebooked, I called my husband to give him my new flight information. I said, "so, it must be pretty bad there this afternoon." He says, "What are you talking about? It's 80 and sunny, and not a cloud in the sky."

ms_go, are you sure they didn't say Chicago had delays due to bad weather?

Chicago is a major hub which can easily be backed up due to bad weather anywhere in the country. I saw nearly the same misunderstanding on "Airline" where the customer got all bent out of shape. He thought the bad weather was in Chicago where he was at the time. the bad weather was where his flight was coming from to land in Chicago to pick him up.

And I really doubt that agents from two different airlines would lie to you.

I suppose the MOST stupid reason for delaying the pushback is the wait for those passengers who insist on bringing ALL their worldly goods onto the plane and are still standing in the aisles trying to stuff said goods into an overhead bin.

Of course, if the airline personnel would simply enforce their own carry-on rules things might be better.

No "big" words and no "made up" explanations required!

Sometimes Chicago itself is free from storms but there's a serious line of them obstructing normal approaches. Have been stacked up over Janesville WI nosing through thunderheads, waiting to land in sunny ORD.

I spent hours at the airport waiting for my connecting flight to Mexico and no one from the airline would tell us what was going on. It turns out that someone accidentally inflated the emergency exit chute and we had to wait for them to get it packed back up!

Coming back from the fatherinlaw's funeral in Tucson, AZ United told us that our flight was delayed because of a mechanical missing part!!! I found out that there were only 12 people on that flight and we all got bumped onto another flight leaving 2 hours later only to find out that because that flight was too full we had to wait another 2 hours for the next one. What a joke. We haven't flown with United since and never will. This is their way of saving money. They don't want to fly their jets out unless there are enough people on them. We did not get home until after midnight and after a terrible trip this was not what we needed. Do you think they could have provided us with a free flight in the future or refund and put on onto another airline. No way! Thanks customer service for you!!!

Snowwhite. This is typical of United. I use to fly with them from SFO to Santa Barbara. The last time I did there was a 6 hour delay. Why? Because not enough passengers for my flight and the one after mine. This had happened every time usually a 2 hour delay but 6 hours was it! They also always pulled this with their Santa Barbara flight to SFO. They are famous for cancelling flights when they do not have enough passengers, especially when they are dealing with small airports.
I will never fly with them again.