Holiday travel nightmares are, unfortunately, an all-too-real experience for some.
For 186 passengers on an American Airlines flight, what was supposed to be a five-hour flight turned into a 20-hour ordeal spread over two days on Wednesday and Thursday.
Flight 295 took off Wednesday morning, Dec. 23, from Miami at 9:45 a.m. ET and was expected to land in Los Angeles by noon local time. It finally arrived at 2:15 a.m. on Christmas Eve morning.
What happened?
A very untimely mechanical problem and an even more untimely delay.
"There was a noise and then we were told later that one of the engines went out and they had to land in Texas," passenger Evelyn Albert said to Los Angeles station KTLA-TV.
Another passenger told the network that he saw smoke in the cockpit.
"I was gagging a little bit on the smoke," Gabriel Larios said. "It was crazy."
The FAA told ABC News that the plane landed "after declaring an emergency for engine oil warning light."
Next problem? For whatever reason, the new plane that left Lubbock apparently did not have enough fuel to get from there to California. So after spending several hours in Lubbock before boarding their plane - luggage was apparently loaded, removed for re-weighing, and then loaded again before taking off - the passengers' first stop was Dallas to gas up.
"It was a nightmare that you can't believe," passenger Tom Danluck told KTLA.
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