I have to say I must be lucky as I have not experienced that many delays, and the ones I have experienced are in the 50 min category and are often caught up in flight by the airline especially on long haul. What I can say having flown around this planet Man and Boy my memory of the delays say pre 1980 was that they were often longer, indeed not uncommon to have a hole day even when at an airlines hub. BCAL from Gatwick for instance took me to Santiago 3 times and New York once via Brighton that I clearly remember, but somehow you did not seem to complain so much. BEA ,TWA , PAN AM also left me stuck in Edinburgh, JFK, St Louis all over night before I was 18 and travelling too and from home to school. The service side and space were better, but I do not think the A/C were as reliable as now, and weather played a bigger part than currently is the case. It just seems we have become a species especially in the developed world where slight hold up and snags get blown out of all proportion to the event involved and of course we have a very driven compensation culture now in certain countries (thanks USA).
Kind regards
Mr Mac (getting older SLF)