Just recently...
I had a day's work in the Seychelles, then a few days wait for a flight back. No problem, chill out on the beach (the hotel and flight were paid for by the customer), then back to work in time to get paid Friday and finish early for the weekend - what an awesome week this was gonna be...

So, job in the Seychelles went well, burnt myself by not appreciating how powerful the sun is when you're that close to the equator, and found myself flying back Thursday morning.

All was well, until our scheduled stopover in Zurich, where we were told that no flights were going anywhere because of some ash cloud, and that Air Seychelles were paying for hotel accommodation overnight.
"Oh well," thinks I, "Better let the office know I'll not be in tomorrow..." and turned on my phone to be greeted by 3 or 4 messages from the boss telling me not to get on the plane from Seychelles...arse.

And so, the entire flight is packed into coaches and sent the the 'local' hotel - in Egerkingen, just over an hour from Zurich.

Ended up we stayed in this (admittedly) nice hotel until Sunday morning, rooms and meals paid for by the airline - all we were paying for was the beer...and I made a point of not starting before 10am (how English huh?), and not finishing before 3am. A group of us were having an competition on who could run up the highest room bill. Sunday morning we were told coaches were being supplied for the trip back to Heathrow via Calais - and that we'd each have to pay 100 Swiss francs (about £60).

So, there was £210 bar bill, £150 phonebill, £60 coach fare and a good £40 for various refreshments on our drive back across Europe...total of £420

Got to know some really good people from the flight while stranded though - hi to anyone from flight HM010
( snee held his breath since, Thu 13 May 2010, 13:38, Reply)