Is there anything more frustrating than flight delays?
The blue screen of death caused all sorts of misery and chaos at airports worldwide. What is your worst experience of plane cancellations? Here is mine.
The blue screen of death caused all sorts of misery over the world in the past week, crashing more than 8.5 million Windows-based computers and causing chaos at airports. Images of frustrated and exhausted travellers stuck in departure halls at major transport hubs appeared on news services.
An incredible 12-hour time-lapse animation of US air space showed the dramatic decline in traffic after thousands of flight cancellations.
It was a shock to realise how a bungled software update from one company could cause so much mayhem – they had one job to do. It reminded me of the pain of flight delays and cancellations.
There is nothing worse than being trapped at an airport en route to a destination or while trying to get home, with no idea when departure might be possible.
I vividly remember being stranded at the rather ironically named Frankfurt-Hahn Airport – it is 175km and a two-hour bus ride from the actual city of Frankfurt – after I booked a cheap Ryanair flight to Germany for the World Cup back in 2006 (my brother had scored some tickets).
Formerly a military base, it had been converted into a commercial airport by the Irish discount flyer in 2001.
As you can imagine, there wasn’t a great deal to do when I heard my flight was cancelled indefinitely at 8am. Handed a €20 voucher and stuck in a tiny airport in the middle of nowhere, all I could do was head to the one and only bar. I sat down with the intention of ordering a coffee but was soon persuaded by my fellow travellers to get a glass of wine. Why not, I thought, what else am I going to do?
Things infinitely improved from that point and I spent the next 12 hours drinking with my newfound grounded friends while enthusiastically bingeing on soccer matches on the bar’s TV. I had never spent so many hours watching sport in my life.
By the time I boarded my flight to Luton Airport in England at 11pm, I’d had a thoroughly memorable day with a group of strangers.
I have never seen any of my companions again but if I did, one mention of the words “Frankfurt-Hahn” would bring back that interminable day in the terminal.
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