TRSboy, that expirience really scares.
I always tried to use well known airlines in my life, so I manged to avoid these situations. I don't use discounted cheap carriers, so I don;t have reasons to compain. My major delays were like 6-7 hours, one day TWA bumped me from their overbooked flight, so I had to fly next day, but I didn't want to fly on that day anyway, so it was ok for me.
I've seen some horrible airline within Russia, it was beyond imaginable ways

When APA Dominicana was flying I tried to use it, so I reserved RT to NYC and here it comes, my desire to support national carriers had died at once. A300 they had was in very bad conditions, service was extremely terrible, it looked like guagua service between SDQ and somewhere else. It was bad!
Certainly many carriers provide very bad service, only few are excellent, in according to statistics Singapore Airlines is the best now, Cathay Pacific, British Airways and JAL follow them. In my opinion in USA Continental now is the best. Delta became terrible now, it looks like NW
So as far as I remember my worst flight was with APA. I don't count charter flight HEX-PLS on Caribair, since it was not regular scheduled flight I won't talk about, after I used that I am wondering how are we still alive?