Frequent flyer Barry Coffey can't remember the last time he had a hassle-free trip, but his travel nightmare after American Airlines was forced to ground its fleet of MD-80 airplanes for safety checks was one for the books.

It started on Tuesday, when he got to the airport just after American announced the first of more than 3200 cancellations over the course of five days. He said he was promised a spot on a hastily rerouted plane, but a series of delays kept him at the gate for hours.

He tried to give up and go home, but was told it would take at least two days to get his bags back. So Coffey waited some more, then spent more than an hour on the tarmac before finally getting to Dallas at five in the morning.

A tornado kept him up the next night, so he tried calling American's customer service line for help rebooking his cancelled flight home.

He spent hours on hold only to be told they couldn't get him back to Chicago until Friday morning.

"It's gotten to the point where no one wants to travel," Coffey told AFP as he checked his email in front of a deserted American Airlines ticket counter at Chicago's O'Hare airport.

"What it's doing to our economy at a time like this... it's ridiculous. It's got to be costing companies like mine thousands of dollars."

One recent US federal report pegged the cost of flight delays at $9-billion a year.

American Airline's troubles were just the latest to snarl travelers who have become sadly accustomed to mass cancellations, hours-long delays, planes stuck on tarmacs and huge lines at security.

And some airlines aren't even handing out peanuts anymore.

Safety crackdowns have also grounded hundreds of United, Southwest, Delta, Alaska and Midwest Airlines flights in recent weeks in the wake of a scandal over skipped aircraft inspections.

Nearly 20 000 passengers were stranded last week when ATA Airlines and Aloha Airlines shut down operations after declaring bankruptcy. Mathew Vaughese (43) had his flight to Dallas for a wedding this weekend canceled twice - first by ATA and then by American.

"This is the third one, hopefully it will work," Vaughese said as his family picked up their tickets.

Record-breaking delays and disruptions

Hope is all that is left to travelers facing record-breaking delays and disruptions at US airports.

Some 29 percent of US flights last year were delayed or cancelled, affecting about 163 million passengers, according to a report released Wednesday. More than 88 234 flights were stuck on the tarmac for one hour to five hours or longer, affecting nearly 5.9 million passengers.

"I don't think I can remember the last time my flight was on time," said frequent traveler Jackie Guenther as she wrestled with an automated check-in kiosk. Many travelers have come to see the disruptions as a matter of course.

They pack (non-liquid) snacks, books, magazines and portable DVD players. They book flights for the night before they need to be somewhere instead of risking flying out first thing in the morning.

Sales representative Francisco Quinonez (28) came to the airport on Friday afternoon because he was having no luck rescheduling his canceled flight by phone. The best they could do was fly him to Dallas, which meant another night away from his family in El Paso, Texas.

But with talk of a spring snowstorm hitting Chicago in the morning, he didn't want to risk getting stuck again.

"Better there than here," he said as he walked up to security. "At least it's close to home."

AFP