Delta's 30 Hours of Hell for Passengers: Plane Diverted Twice in Two Days

A Delta 30-hour nightmare trip that was supposed to take four hours finally ended this week after the flight was diverted twice from New York's John F. Kennedy International Airport over the course of two days.

Delta Flight 944, loaded with 159 passengers, left the Dominican Republic Monday afternoon and was scheduled to land in New York City around 6:15 p.m. after a four-hour flight. But heavy traffic at JFK caused the to plane to divert to Manchester, New Hampshire, NBC New York reported.

The problems seemed to snowball from there. After waiting on the tarmac for two hours while the aircraft refueled, passengers were then notified that the crew was out of hours and they'd have to deplane. Oh, and there weren't any customs officials on hand to process the international flight passengers.

Finally, after customs agents arrived from Portland, Maine, the passengers were able to settle into hotel rooms for the night (that's after trudging through heavy snow to get to the customs area, one passenger told NBC).

They're letting us off 20 people at a time, but they rejected my emergency snow slide idea as "unrealistic." Whatever.

— Lauren Karasek (@ElleKarasek) February 16, 2016

The Delta passengers were off and headed for New York City again the next day, PIX11.com reported. But their travel nightmare wasn't over yet.

Wind and turbulence threw the plane off course yet again, and the pilot was forced to divert to Boston. The conditions were so bad that some passengers got sick and needed oxygen, the television station reported.

"There were a lot of people getting sick, several people needed oxygen," passenger Maribel Reyes told NBC. "It was really bad, I never experienced turbulence like that. I thought the plane was going to break in half. The pilot described it as a blender."

The trip angered at least one passenger who took to Twitter.

@delta diverted flight DL 944. My family and I are now renting a car. Your agents are rude and won't even put our names on the list. Done!!

— Aye Soe (@ayesoe) February 16, 2016

The twice-diverted flight eventually landed at JFK at 8 p.m. on Tuesday, according to ABC7NY.com. Some passengers said they were grateful to finally get to their destination.

"They handled it beautifully," passenger Corie Buonanno told ABC. "They were as accommodating as possible, and friendly. They were going through it with us, and they put on that stoic face and did what they do every day."

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