Originally Posted by tennisguru

So I finally got a chance to watch the replay. Controller was definitely being over the top, but I've been in LGA like that a bunch of times and honestly asking for your number in the sequence seems a bit ridiculous too, especially trying to get in during a very busy time on the radio (which is a lot of the time at LGA I know). I mean there's obviously tons of planes out there and does it really matter if you're #18 or #22? Either way it's going to be a long time. They sat for an hour before returning to the gate so they had time to play with before fuel was going to become an issue. Personally in most of those situations I've found if you just wait it out a bit you can get a general idea of how things are flowing and roughly where you stand. If fuel and/or duty day become an issue then a radio call like "DL999 has 30 minutes before we have to return to the gate, how are things looking for us?" could garner a little more actionable response from the controller.