At the end of our summer holiday in 2007 we were due to fly from Orlando to Manchester via New York (JFK) but our flight was delayed several hours due to bad weather.

Many outbound flights from JFK had also been delayed. We arrived at the terminal in the early hours of the morning so we were expecting some problems in the airport. Understatement of the year.

If you can picture the crowds at a theme park on a very busy day and they had all just suddenly decided to go to the arrivals / departure lounge at JFK then all stop and either stand, sit or lay down you will get the idea. People had set up camp on every available area of floor space in the departure lounge and adjoining corridors. We had to physically step over dozens of people to reach the Delta information desk.

When we arrived at the desk there were in excess of 300 people all in one line. It took nearly 3 hours to reach the front of the queue and be informed that our connecting flight had departed so we had to rebook our flight for the following day. The representative also informed us that we could retrieve our suitcases but it would probably take another 2 – 3 hours to find them. We didn’t take her up on her offer.

By the time we left the desk the queue had grown to an even longer length than when we joined it.

It was difficult to estimate the number of people in the departure lounge but we guessed it to be around 3,000.

We decided to try and book into a hotel. All the hotels we contacted or managed to get through to were fully booked (due the airport problems). We decided the solution was to take a taxi back to the hotel we had stayed in when we began our holiday.

So here we were in New York, under the shadow of the Empire State building in the not so early hours of the morning, no luggage (that would be of any use to us) arriving in the same hotel we left 2 weeks previously.

To say we felt strange about the whole experience doesn’t really describe how we were both feeling.

The following day we were exhausted but we did a quick shop for essential items and had an excellent and unexpected day in New York.

We went back to the airport with some trepidation not knowing if their would be seats for us on the plane.

It was clear when we arrived that the flight was over full. Some passengers from the previous day had just turned up expecting to board the flight. They were disappointed.

Boarding of the plane was about to begin when we herd our name called over the PA system. Thinking the worst we checked with the Delta agent only to be pleasantly surprised that we had been upgraded to 1st class. I can honestly say that we saw very little of the actual flight. We had our silver service meal then we both slept (with our noise reducing earphones on) until we were 45 minutes from our arrival at Manchester airport.

Our flight home had been one of the longest and most eventful we have ever had and most defiantly one to remember.