The scenario is always the same. You board the aircraft, get comfortable, and nothing happens for a while. After few minutes, you hear the familiar “click” of the pilot’s intercom activation. Here starts the show…

“Good morning Ladies and Gentlemen, this is your captain speaking. We’re ready for start-up, but…” and then comes one of the usual excuse for the delay. I put some of my favorites here below.

No-show passengers
This is a very classical one. Checked-in passengers with luggage, but did not come to the gate on due time. To avoid an easy terrorist attack, their luggage have to be taken out of the plane. According to Murphy’s law, the bag to be taken off the plane is at the very bag of the cargo hold…

Winter special – de-icing
Ice or snow accumulation on the wings reduce aircraft performance so much that it may become unable to take-off. To prevent this, and to remove existing ice or snow, the aircraft takes kind of a shower of glycol. This is normally done using trucks with sprays. Either the truck comes to the parking spot, or the plane must taxi to central de-icing spots on the airport.

Traffic – the prisonner game
When the traffic is dense, flights are given slots. In bad situations, slots can be more than one hour later than planned take-off time. Pilots are given a chance to improve their case by sending a so-called “ready message”. This notifies ATC the plane is ready and if an improvement is possible, the slot is improved. No way sending a ready message is passengers are not all on board, nor if doors are open.

The big deal for a pilot with a bad slot is that he needs all passengers on board very long time before slot, with the risk of NOT getting an improvement… and keeping 180 passengers in a plane for one hour is not exactly making them happy…

The silly one
One reason I never undestood it the good old “we’re delayed because of the late arrival of the incoming aircraft”. I heard it many times, but never really grasped it. Basically, we’re late because we’re late. Not exaclty an explanation, isn’t it ?

Last but not least – The new one…
Very recently I have been given a new reason for a delay… the missing co-pilot ! On that day, the scheduled co-pilot declared sick, so a replacement had to be organized. As the newly assigned co-pilot had to be flown from a remote location, we had to wait for him… Not exactly the usual excuse, so it was quite noticeable… one sometimes have small pleasures.