There's no two ways about it - holiday travel sucks. Anyone who's ever gone anywhere for the holidays has a hellish tale to tell about a Christmas spent snowed in at the airport, a New Year's Eve wasted by a pileup on the expressway. Murphy loves holiday travel - if something can go wrong, it will - but it seems airports and airplanes are the absolute worst.
Which means they offer the best holiday horror stories.
Who can forget the blizzard of 2006 that shuttered Denver's airport at the start of the Christmas travel frenzy, canceling hundreds of flights and sending ripples nationwide? Or how about the U.S Airways fiasco of 2004 where 10,000 or so suitcases piled up at the airline's hub in Philadelphia? That was almost as bad as Comair canceling every one of its 1,100 Christmas Day flights, stranding more than 30,000 people.
But Northwest Airlines takes the prize.
Just after New Year's in 1999, 20 Northwest planes packed with people landed in Detroit, which was besieged by a blizzard. Airport officials directed the planes to sit tight on the tarmac while crews attempted to clear the taxiways and jet bridges. Everyone waited.
And waited.
And waited.
More than six hours later, the planes still hadn't moved. Susan Carey of the Wall Street Journal wrote an amazing story describing the hellish conditions that included overflowing toilets, a diaper shortage, panicking passengers and a near revolt.
Think you can top that? Or at least entertain your fellow readers with a story you wear as a badge of honor? Use the Reddit widget below to share your tale of woe and vote for your favorite.
Photo by Flickr user alist.
Share your holiday travel horror story and vote for your favorite.
While you can submit as many stories as you want, you can only submit one every 30 minutes. No HTML allowed.
