Flights are sometimes delayed or cancelled due to bad weather conditions or technical problems. A short delay of about an hour should be taken in your stride. It is in the case of longer delays that an airline's service orientations is put to rest.

Sometimes, junior staff are evasive on the issue and it becomes necessary to make contact with senior personnel. Passengers in these situations are advised to seek their rights. In any event, food and drink must be provided; and if delays stretch, hotel accommodation and alternative arrangements must also be provided. The better airlines also provide complimentary telephone calls and faxes if delays are significant.

Once, when I found myself on a cancelled flight from Madras to Singapore, the Singapore Airlines staff at the counter suggested that I share a room with a fellow passenger. I flatly refused the offer and suggested that as I was a first-class passenger, I should be offered not just a room, but a junior suite, to enable me to continue doing work that would otherwise have been accomplished en route. I also said I would be using the hotel's facilities to make long-distance calls and send faxes, all of which insisted that the airline pay for. The resident manager somewhat reluctantly made some calls to his superiors, and then graciously acceded to the request.

On another occasion, a friend and I were flown from West Africa to New York and were to connect to Washington D.C. The airline staff forgot about us and we were kept waiting in the lounge until the flight took off. The mistake was realized too late. The airline representative then took us to very plush lounge of Pan Am where we were pampered with comfort and refreshments, besides the facility to make long-distance calls, for any duration anywhere in the world, for the next two hours until the next connection was available!