Flight Delays Are Infuriating, But Please Cool Down: No Captain Delays You on Purpose

People who frequently fly abroad have probably all encountered serious departure delays due to weather, scheduling, or mechanical checks.

I myself once encountered a full twelve-hour delay on an international long-haul flight. And dramatically: the origin was delayed six hours first, and after finally reaching the transfer point, the connecting next flight announced another six-hour delay!

After burning a whole day, the airline’s compensation was just a meal voucher at each stop—the two together worth about 1,000 NT dollars.

But when we learned in the waiting lounge that the flight was confirmed to be heavily delayed, did anyone pound the table and shout, make a huge scene?

Absolutely not!

Back then, smartphones and tablets weren’t as ubiquitous as now, so people couldn’t pass the time endlessly scrolling short videos. All the travelers from various countries just quietly found seats in the lounge and waited. At first only a few people politely went to the counter to ask the ground staff what had happened; two groups of mainland Chinese travelers, upon learning they’d have to wait several more hours, quite naturally pulled a deck of playing cards from their carry-on, sat cross-legged on the floor, and happily started playing Dou Dizhu—I genuinely felt their mental fortitude and preparation were absolutely top-notch.

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Blind Fury: You’re Just Suffering From Excessive Self-Regard

Yet in recent years, as the threshold for traveling abroad has lowered, we increasingly see baffling out-of-control scenes in the news or on social media:

At the slightest delay, someone pounds the table and curses at the boarding gate, pointing at the front-line ground staff’s nose and yelling; some casually threaten to complain to a legislator; some even occupy the aisle after the cabin door closes, refuse to fasten their seatbelt, and put on the arrogant face of “I paid for my ticket, so I’m the boss.”

To these people who lose their minds every time there’s a flight delay, I’d like to pour a basin of cold water:

“You really are suffering from excessive self-regard!”

Ask yourself: no airline in the world, and no captain, is so idle as to deliberately target you and refuse to let the plane take off!

There’s usually only one reason a plane can’t lift off on time—“to protect your life and safety.”

For a one-hour delay, the airline faces cascading apron parking fees, missed-connection compensation, crew overtime penalties, and huge fuel scheduling costs—tens of thousands at least, hundreds of thousands at most. No one desires an on-time departure more than the airline.

And the captain and first officer holding the controls in the cockpit are likewise ordinary flesh-and-blood people whose families wait on the ground for them to come home safely. If the external weather hadn’t crossed the safety threshold, or the instrument panel hadn’t shown an anomaly that must be thoroughly cleared, who would be willing to stay on the ground under the pressure of passenger abuse?

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Life and Death on the Plateau: That Ticket Sealed by the Snowstorm

Often, when we learn the plane can’t take off on time, the primitive human brain produces intense panic and anxiety over the “loss of control amid the unfamiliar and unknown.” Because time is out of your hands, because all subsequent plans are disrupted, some people subconsciously convert this fragile panic into aggressive anger, venting it on the unarmed ground staff before them.

I have a friend who loves high-mountain travel. One year he went to Lhasa, Tibet. When finishing the trip and preparing to fly out from Gonggar Airport, the plateau skies unexpectedly hit an extremely rare snowstorm and violent downdraft.

The airport broadcast immediately announced all flights canceled, and stranded passengers had to wait on the plane or rebook to the next day.

Several business travelers originally rushing back to Chengdu to negotiate deals flew into a rage on the spot. They rushed forward, surrounded the counter, pounded the acrylic partition, cursed at the young ground-staff girl, and even shouted loudly:

“What’s a little snow? We have contracts worth tens of millions to sign! Can you afford to compensate for the delay? No matter what, you must get us airborne immediately today!”

Amid the chaos, a duty captain who’d just come out of the control area, four gold stripes on his shoulder, silently walked to the counter. Looking at this group of furious passengers, he answered with just one extremely calm yet weighty sentence:

“Forcing your way into a snowstorm at an altitude of over three thousand meters on the plateau—if you really hit a downdraft, then it’s no longer a matter of a flight delay—it’s that none of you will ever again have the chance to stand here and be angry.”

At these words, the noisy waiting hall instantly fell into dead silence. Those passengers who’d just been pounding the table and shouting turned pale and then green, and finally could only slink away, heads lowered, silently turning back to their seats.

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Reverence for Gravity and Nature: The Ultimate Cultivation of a Mature Traveler

Humans learned to fly only a little over a hundred years ago.

Sending a several-hundred-ton pressurized metal giant bird up to ten thousand meters, cruising at 800 km/h through the minus-fifty-degree freezing stratosphere—this itself is a technological miracle of humanity’s tiny wisdom endlessly contending with nature’s gravity.

Safety was never a given freebie, but a fragile line of defense bought by countless engineers, meteorologists, ground maintenance crews, and captains refusing to yield an inch and nitpicking every procedure.

When the alarm sounds, when the captain decisively decides to abort takeoff or turn back, that’s not retreat—it’s a professional pilot showing, in the face of nature, the most noble reverence and the decision-making courage to protect hundreds of lives.

Next time you encounter a flight delay abroad, take a deep breath and cool the nameless fire in your chest.

Pull out that novel in your backpack you haven’t opened in ages, walk to a café and order a rich latte, or simply, like those two groups of mainland travelers back then, find a corner and relax.

Be glad your feet are still on solid ground. Because on life’s long journey, arriving safely at the destination is always a thousand times more important than arriving on time.