Nightmare Flight: Fliers Stuck on Plane for 28 Hours

Passengers flying from Abu Dhabi in the United Arab Emirates landed Saturday evening in San Francisco—but only after a grueling 28 hours on the plane, only 16 of which were spent in flight. They sat on the Abu Dhabi tarmac stranded by dense fog, unable to deplane, for 12 hours, Quartz reports. During that period, they received wrong information about when the flight would leave, the AP reports. "They kept telling us that we were going to leave, you know, 15 minutes from now, 20 minutes from now … for 12 hours," says one passenger, per ABC7. The fliers were barred from exiting because, the crew reportedly said, there were too many other people being held at the airport amid what Etihad Airways called "unprecedented fog."

"The delay was then compounded by the requirement to replace the aircraft's ultra-long haul operating crew, who had exceeded their flight time limitations," the airline notes. "Everybody was fighting with each other, and the flight attendants were fighting with us, and we were fighting with the flight attendants," says another passenger. The group was eventually given food, but only after some complained, the AP notes. Tweeted one passenger: "I feel like I'm in a Seinfeld episode," Reuters reports. Had the flight originated in the US, the airline could have seen heavy fines, CBS San Francisco notes. (More flight delays stories.)