On the subject of holding I listened to the RT again and I think I understand the LH crew’s frustration. Happy to be corrected if I’ve misheard it but what I believe LH says is something to the effect that “you told me ten minutes holding and that expired four minutes ago”. Later the control says they can expect a further 10-15 minutes. Perhaps if the LH mental model was ten minutes being stretched to half an hour then his irritation is understandable. Incidentally I still think both he and the controller used inappropriate language.
The other thing I don’t believe has been discussed is the time of day as it relates to the crew. I believe someone upthread said this occurred around 19:00 local? If that was the case then it would be 04:00 at their home base and so they would have flown through (in) the window of circadian low (WOCL). Even the most cheerful crew could be forgiven for being a little tetchy at that time of the day!
Lastly, I doubt anyone in this discussion knows the details of the fuel plan so I won’t pass judgment of whether they had enough.