My worst time was getting stranded at Heathrow in London on my way back to the states from Isreal due to Reagan and the Patco Strike. I had very little money with me as I was on my way home, so had to camp out at the airport for a few days, going to sign up for standby on flights every morning. It finally paid off though, I managed to get a first class seat on a flight to O'Hare. I made good use of the free drinks!
More recently, on my Christmas trip to New Orleans, we made it to Charlotte on the first leg of our flight from Cedar Rapids, and boarded our flight from there to New Orleans on time late afternoon/early evening. As we neared New Orleans, the Captain notified us that the fog was too low for us to land there, but we would circle Gulf Port, Mississippi for a while to s while to see if things improve. They didn't, so we landed in Jackson, Mississippi. They had no infrastructure to handle us, so after sitting there a few hours, they decided to refuel the plane and fly us back to Charlotte. We got therer around 4 am.When there, they informed us that since it was weather, there would be no hotel vouchers or meal vouchers, and that our flight would be continued at 11 AM. We tried to sleep a while on the airport floor, but then people started coming inf for the early morning flights. Eventually, we lucked out in getting a seat on an 8 AM flight, and finally made it to NO a day late.
On our way back, we successfully flew to Chicago, and got on the plane for our flight to CR. Everything was going welll, although it was snowing on the ground, until we neared the eastern Iowa airport, and were informed by our captain that there had been a mechanical problem on takeoff and we had to go back to Chicago. After several hours of waiting there, they found us another plane, and we alll got aboard. After a few minutes the captain informed us that the flight had been cancllled! At least we got hotel and meal vouchers for that one, and were able to fly back to Iowa the next day.
After some research, we found out that the New Orleans airport lacked some important part of guidance equipment for pilots flying through fog due to some constructinon projects there.