What Would You Do if You Were Stuck on a Plane That Was Grounded on a Tarmac for This Many Hours?

SAN FRANCISCO (TheBlaze/AP) — It's not just that hundreds of airplane passengers took what amounted to a 28-hour overseas flight...it's that they spent 12 of those hours sitting in the plane on a tarmac in the Middle East, waiting for takeoff.

Yes, the weary passengers eventually reached their destination in San Francisco, but they were still plenty irritated by the experience after they finally walked out of the plane.

And as you might expect tempers grew short on Etihad Airlines Flight 183 when fog in the city of Abu Dhabi delayed takeoff for a half-day, passengers told San Francisco broadcaster KGO.

Image source: KGO-TV

"They kept telling us that we were going to leave, you know 15 minutes from now, 20 minutes from now, 30 minutes for now, for 12 hours," passenger Thomas Piani told reporters in San Francisco after finally landing in the city on Saturday evening.

Passengers said the flight crew told them the Abu Dhabi airport was too crowded with other stranded flights to allow them to get off the plane to wait.

"Everybody was fighting with each other, and the flight attendants were fighting with us, and we were fighting with the flights attendants," passenger Venkatesh Pahwa said.

Image source: KGO-TV

Etihad, a national airline of the United Arab Emirates, which includes Abu Dhabi, said in a statement on its website that fog had delayed flights and caused airport congestion.

The airline apologized for travelers' inconvenience but said the delays were beyond its control.

Etihad spokespeople did not immediately respond to an after-hours request from The Associated Press for passengers' complaints about conditions onboard during the wait on the tarmac.