Of course at 1 a.m., there are no replacement crews, and all other options are exhausted -- any other flights that might have connected overseas to India have long since departed.  We were told we had to stay at hotels that night.

And how many gate agents were there to process vouchers for our forced overnight stay? Three. By the time we got our vouchers and shuttle buses were dispatched, most of us didn't get to the hotel before 2:30 am. And because of time/duty regulations that required pilots a minimum of 12 hours rest, we were told to return to the airport by 1 p.m. that afternoon, for a 3 p.m. departure for India.

When I got to the hotel, I found the pilot, who was also waiting for his room, and asked him to explain duty time in relation to the possibility that we ever could have realistically departed JFK that night. He was clear on the numbers: If the plane had been cleaned and catered on time, if Atlanta hadn't decided to fix an electronics item that was not essential to the safe operation of the flight, we would have made it. How's that for a bedtime story?

Nearly 200 passengers and crew delayed, inconvenienced. Business meetings canceled. Meals missed. Connecting flights jettisoned.

But wait, it actually gets worse!

Ten hours later, we dutifully reported back to the Delta terminal for that 3pm departure to India. Checked in, went through security again. And, on the way to the gate, an announcement. Our flight was cancelled! Again!

Now, the listed reason was mechanical. But by this time, and once again, all the other flight options on other airlines had evaporated.

In the end, after living at the Delta terminal for the better part of a day, I left on Delta Flight 16 on April 2. We left late, again. And then waited another hour to get to the runway. And I finally arrived in Mumbai 28 hours late.

Let's recap:

Why do I call this a mismanaged flight? For a number of important and necessary reasons:

1. What did Delta know and when did they know it? With a listed flight time of more than 14 hours, Delta management certainly knew that the flight crew was already nearing the margins of allowable duty time before they ever boarded the flight.
2. Flight attendant call buttons We were not full in coach. It only affected a number of rows. It was not an essential required safety item. If you can't push the flight attendant call button. How about … raising your hand?
3. When they pushed back from the gate they knew we were 75 in line. Simple arithmetic would have told them at that moment the crew wouldn't make it.
4. Once the flight timed out, the airline should have called the hotels and called for  buses. They could have easily started preprinting hotel vouchers. Instead, they waited until we were back at the gate and only made the processing time worse.

Now comes the fun part. How much did this cost passengers in terms of lost time, lost productivity, missed meetings? And how much did it cost the airline?

This is not about a passenger bill of rights. It's about a cockpit bill of rights and internal decision making at each airline.

And therein lies the problem of central management. Waiting for Atlanta to make a decision cost everyone.  No one should wait for Atlanta to make an operational flight decision when they do not possess local knowledge of the situation on the ground at a particular airport.

Think about this: The very employees at the airline who have the most public contact are treated on a need to know basis by their own management. If they need to know, headquarters doesn't  tell them! It creates a ripple effect for all sorts of different delays. And in our case, at every opportunity for a delay, the airline acted in a way that was destined to delay us even more.

This is absurd. This is stupid. And, this is avoidable. I, of course, have no monopoly on my story of Delta's Flight 16. My story can easily be matched by thousands of passengers on other flights, on other airlines.

Bottom line: the airlines are stretched too thin, and airline schedules are already unrealistic. One glitch and the system disintegrates, as it did with Flight 16.

At no time did anyone share our sense of urgency. They were all waiting for Atlanta. Next time, perhaps they should wait for Godot.  Something tells me he'd be faster.

Peter Greenberg is TODAY's travel editor. His column appears weekly on TODAYshow.com. Visit his Web site at PeterGreenberg.com.

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