Hellish Flight Takes 16 Hours From LAX to JFK

Flights don’t get much worse than Virgin America Flight 404, which took 16 long hours to get from LAX to JFK. The plane was supposed to land in New York at 3:30pm, but high winds forced it to circle for hours. Finally it landed in Newburgh, 90 miles away, where it sat on the tarmac until almost midnight, passengers tell the New York Post. One passenger had a panic attack and was escorted off by police.

Food supplies ran so low that Pringles had to be rationed, at four chips per passenger. Eventually Jet Blue, which has facilities in Newburgh, got buses to carry the passengers the last two and a half hours to New York. They finally arrived at 2am. To make the PR disaster even worse for Virgin, one of the passengers was a social media executive, who posted constant updates about the experience online. Virgin's CEO saw the videos and called to apologize, promising a $100 credit for all passengers. (More Virgin America stories.)