Apologies to those who've heard this one before!
A colleague and I were starting a 10-day whistle-stop tour of the US in cattle class on the (now discontinued) BA187 from BHX to JFK via GLA and the date was 13/03/94, which some may recall was when the boys in green decided to drop some mortars (which luckily failed to detonate) onto the runway at LHR.
We were already boarded, but were told what was happening and that our departure would be delayed because lots of flights into LHR with connecting pax for the states were being diverted, some to BHX. After an hour or so the flight, initially pretty empty (the service had only recently been launched), began to fill up.
While this was going on, it was noticeable that the aircraft (a 767) was rocking on its stand and the flags in front of BHX were standing straight out. Yes, there was a 'hurricane' on its way (parts of the UK experienced almost 100mph winds). We took off (a couple of hours late) without incident, but getting into GLA was a different matter - high crosswinds necessitated a go around and there were plenty of white knuckles on display when we were finally planted safely but firmly on the ground.
Of course, with all the disruption to UK flights the aircraft was now full to the gunwales. The captain announced that because of the high winds we would be climbing quickly after take off and reinforced the need to keep seat belts fastened until the light went out. He also told us that to avoid the strong jet stream we would be taking a more northerly route than usual - he wasn't wrong as we later passed over Greenland, which I've only previously seen on west coast routings. This added further to our delay and we eventually arrived at JFK 6 hours late at 22:00 having been on board for 16 hours.
PS We were hoping to be able to catch the last evening flight for our onward connection to ATL, but this was foiled by a yellow cab who couldn't find his way from JFK to EWR!