32 hours

I just got back home yesterday night after spending a week in Peru.

The trip was really fun; the 13 of us spent two days exploring Cuzco and the Sacred Valley, and then embarked on a four day trek, hiking the Inca Trail to Machu Picchu, before returning to Cuzco by train/bus. I'll post much more later, including photos (I took over 30 GB of RAW so they're likely to take some time to process).

The travel part was horrible. We were booked on American Airlines from San Francisco to Lima via Miami, and from Lima to Cuzco and back on LAN Peru.

Things that went wrong:
- The outbound flight from Miami to Lima departed over an hour late. We were supposed to arrive at 4:10am to catch our 6:00am LAN flight, but instead arrived at 5:05am. Nevertheless, we cleared immigration and got to baggage claim by 5:15am. There, we proceeded to wait 40 minutes for our bags. Hearing several "final boarding" calls for your flight while standing in baggage claim is really frustrating. We ended up taking the 7:20am to Cuzco, and barely got there in time for our 10am morning meeting with our Inca Trail tour company.
- Because we had missed the 6:00am flight on the outbound journey, when we got to the airport to take our return flight, LAN said our reservation had been cancelled, even though we had specifically asked the agent to check that our return reservation was still valid, when she was rebooking us on the 7:20am. After some heated discussion, the LAN agent grudgingly gave us seats on our original 4:45pm flight. D and I were seated separately, but thought nothing of it until we got on the airplane and discovered the flight was only half full. We easily reseated ourselves, as my entire row was empty. I'm pretty sure that was no accident; the agent was not very happy with us after our conversation.
- Upon arrival in Lima, the American Airlines desk was not yet open for check-in, since we had arrived nearly 5 hours before the departure time for our Miami flight. We were told it would open at 7pm. Some AA employees did show up around 7pm but they spent at least 10-15 minutes setting up, and then after they opened the line, we spent another 10-15 minutes doing security interviews. We then stood in line waiting for the actual check-in desk to open until about 7:45pm, while several of the desk agents stood around chatting. We finally checked in around 8pm and were told our flight was going to be 20-30 minutes late.
- We showed up at the gate at the revised boarding time, and were surprised to see that our flight was listed as "on time". However, no one was boarding. The gate agent said the flight was still 20-30 minutes late, but didn't explain why the departures board was wrong.
- After 20-30 minutes, we were told the plane had arrived but had "maintenance issues" and the flight was going to be an additional 45 minutes late. Then, after an hour, we were told the maintenance was going to take another 2 hours. At this point a massive throng of people approached the gate desk to try to get their connections rebooked. The guy sitting next to us checked his laptop and informed us that the same flight had been 6 hours late the day before, which did not make us feel better. The gate agents did give out some sandwiches after awhile (although they didn't have any options for our vegetarian friend), but no meal vouchers. We finally left Lima around 3:30am, instead of the originally scheduled 11:20pm. As an aside, the floor in the Lima airport is tiled with stone and very cold.
- When we arrived in Miami, we discovered we were rebooked on the 3:30pm flight to San Francisco. (Our original flight was 8:30am, but we were already 4 hours late, so we calculated it would only be a couple of extra hours of waiting; not too bad.) However, half of our group was booked on the later 7:00pm flight. After doing some research, they got themselves rebooked on the 1:45pm connecting through LAX. At this point we all expected to arrive back in San Francisco around 6 or 6:30pm, and D and I had managed to secure $10 meal vouchers for lunch, so we were moderately un-cranky. (As another aside, I am now much, much too familiar with the Manchu Wok in Miami's Concourse D, having also spent 3 hours there last year waiting for a delayed AA flight to Buenos Aires, since it closes the latest of all the restaurants in that terminal.)
- We boarded our flight at 3pm as scheduled, and I fell asleep while waiting on the runway. An hour later I woke up and we were still on the runway. Apparently we had been delayed an hour and 40 minutes because a runway at SFO was closed "due to weather". Conveniently, a thunderstorm rolled in as we were waiting on the runway, and at the time that we were cleared to takeoff, the thunder and lightening were in full force, and it was pouring cats and dogs. We waited another 25 minutes for the storm to clear, and finally took off 2.5 hours late.
- When we finally arrived in SFO, I checked the LAX route that the other group had taken. They had been delayed out of Miami (30 minutes) and delayed out of LAX (30 minutes) but had eventually landed at 6:20pm. I am not clear at all about why it was okay for them to land at 6:20pm but not okay for us to land at 6:30pm.

In the end, instead of getting home around noon on Sunday, I got home at 9:30pm, after 32 hours of travel. I think that may have been my longest travel day ever, in terms of absolute hours.

Proportionally, my worst-delayed trip involved getting stuck on a runway in Syracuse for 9 hours while flying from San Francisco to Boston via St. Louis, after having already seen the runway at Logan Airport. That particular flight (on the now-defunct TWA) also involved aborted detours to Hartford and JFK, and should have taken about 6 hours but ended up taking 17 hours in total.

Anyway, it's a really good thing the rest of the trip was gorgeous and delicious and exhilarating and otherwise awesome. Stay tuned...