A few years ago, I had a pretty dreadful experience with a flight delay while travelling back from a holiday in Rome. It was late December, and I was scheduled to catch an evening flight back to London, hoping to get home in good time for New Year's Eve.
When I arrived at the terminal, everything seemed orderly at first, but shortly after clearing security, the departure boards flashed with warnings. It turned out that a freak blizzard had swept across northern Europe, grounding inbound planes and creating complete chaos for ground staff. Our departure was initially pushed back by a couple of hours, but as the night wore on, that crept up to an agonising nine-hour holdup.
To pass the time, I tried to make the best of a bad situation. At first, I wandered around the duty-free shops and grabbed an overpriced sandwich and coffee from a small café. Once the shops started closing, fellow passengers and I ended up camping out near the boarding gate. I read quite a bit on my tablet, listened to a couple of downloaded podcasts, and even struck up a conversation with a couple from Manchester who were in the same boat. We took turns minding each other's luggage whenever someone needed to stretch their legs.
To be honest, the whole ordeal was thoroughly exhausting. In the beginning, there was widespread frustration because communication from the airline was quite poor, but after a few hours, a sort of collective resignation set in. By the time we finally boarded at dawn, I was completely drained, though immensely relieved just to be heading home.