Flight diverted twice, lands after 30 hours

Passengers disembarked and spent the night in New Hampshire, and then boarded another flight bound for JFK on Tuesday morning.

If you thought the problems in this 30-hour flight were now over, you’d be wrong.

Delta flight no. 944, carrying 159 passengers, departed Punta Cana 3:15 p.m. local time Monday and was set to land at JFK at about 6:15 p.m. local time, about four hours later.

“It was snowing and cold, and everybody was exhausted and cranky after waiting on the plane for two hours”, passenger Corie Buonanno of Tarrytown, told NBC 4 NY.

First, there was a diversion. The plane and its intrepid passengers once again made for JFK on Tuesday only to encounter 60mph winds.

Delta said customs agents arrived from Portland, Maine, to process the passengers, and that customers were accommodated overnight in local hotels. That flight was not blessed, either.

Wind and turbulence threw the plane off course yet again, and the pilot was forced to divert to Boston. Which I’ve never seen before, besides in a movie’. One flyer described as so turbulent it “felt the plane was going to break in half”; another, like “a blender”. By the time the flight finally made it to its destination Tuesday night, only the heartiest 90 of the original 160 or so passengers were on it.

“There were a lot of people getting sick, several people needed oxygen”, Maribel Reyes told NBC.

A Delta plane had a rather lengthy setback.

“We really decided that we didn’t want to get on another airplane so we booked some train tickets”, Karasek told WMUR-TV, adding that she took an Amtrak train home to New York City. A full day later, the passengers finally staggered through the doors of JFK.

So Karasek and her travel companions found a hotel on their own and received a “sorry” email from Delta at 1 a.m. At 8 a.m., they learned they’d depart – hopefully for NYC – in two hours.

The flight diversions were indeed due to bad weather, as Delta spokesperson Michael Thomas told HuffPost.

Despite the 30-hour nightmare, the traveler is only bitter about the airline’s customer service, but is putting the experience in perspective.