One of my clients went to Saudi Arabia on business and when he came back he described how he had spent three days trying to fly between 2 cities.
I had a similar experience in 1974 trying to get from Bahrain to Riyadh. F-27 to Dhahran, then overnight in the terminal hugging my precious cargo (air survey film), finally the following evening a 737 to Riyadh. My memory of 'queuing' is a large semi-circular throng, about 5 people deep, around the ticket desk, all waving paperwork/passports in the air and shouting.
Still, both I and the film got there eventually and then we just had to wait for 'permission' to operate the survey flights that the government had asked us to perform......
I remember weeks but maybe it was only days waiting for that!