For more than eight hours Friday, passengers on American Airlines Flight 1348, rerouted from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport during Friday's storms, sat on the tarmac at Austin-Bergstrom International Airport – with no food, dirty toilets and frustration levels rising.

They watched out their windows as planes landed and took off.

The flight from San Francisco was supposed to land at D/FW at 11:35 a.m. But the storms in the Dallas area Friday forced the plane to reroute to Austin. In all, American canceled 428 flights Friday, with 222 out of D/FW. Of the 87 diverted, 20 were later canceled officials said. In addition, the airline canceled about 100 flights for Saturday.

Andy Backover, a spokesman for American Airlines, said the 87 diversions were double the usual number during a weather event. And they came at the busiest time of the year for travel.

"You know, we've got kids here. My 5-year-old daughter has been on here for 11 hours," Tom Dickson, 44, of Los Altos, Calif., said by cellphone from the grounded plane. "And there's younger kids on here than her."

He was headed for Belize with his wife and daughter.

"I fly a lot domestically and internationally, and I've never seen anything like this," he added. "We've been told several things, and none of it has happened. Even when they tell us something, we can't have any faith in it."

Mr. Backover said American was "trying its best to get [the passengers] to their destination."

But he could not say whether the airline has a policy for the amount of time that passengers can spend on grounded airplanes.

The American Airlines pilot, who declined to give his name, said Friday's incident was a first for him.

He said three other planes were also grounded because all the gates at Bergstrom were full. Slides, he said, can be used only for emergencies, and the Transportation Safety Administration has strict guidelines about the use of stairs.

He declined to comment further but told passengers: "If I had a place to physically put the plane, I would do it."

A spokesman for Austin's airport said he could not comment on individual airlines. But he did verify that four flights from California were stranded on the tarmac from about 1 p.m. until late evening.

In 2001, Northwest Airlines agreed to pay $7.1 million to more than 7,000 passengers forced to wait for hours on grounded airplanes at the Detroit airport during a storm in 1999. The airline admitted no wrongdoing in settling the class-action lawsuit.

Some passengers waited 11 hours on board with no food and in some cases were subjected to overflowing toilets. After the incident, Northwest changed some of its emergency procedures. It now has a policy that says passengers must not be stuck on grounded planes for more than three hours.

More than a dozen Northwest planes were stranded as the storm pounded the Midwest on Jan. 3, 1999.

On Flight 1348 Friday, passengers tried to stay calm, but confusion reigned.

"The bathrooms have gone from a gas station to, 'What's the last concert you've been to?' " said Andy Welch, 53, of Linn Creek, Mo. "Think about that. It's probably about that."

Jeff Hunt, 33, who grew up in Fort Worth and was coming to see his family, said many passengers didn't even have breakfast.

"The flight was early to begin with," he said, taking off from California at 9:30 a.m. Dallas time. "Everyone got little sleep last night ... few of us had breakfast."

At about 8:15 p.m. the pilot took it upon himself to taxi the plane toward the terminal. Passengers were able to deplane at 9:04 p.m. – after nearly 12 hours on the plane.

American has about 2,200 flights a day.

Claire Cummings is a freelance writer based in Michigan.