Yes. I know. Tales of long/delayed/strange plane rides generally are of interest only to the people who suffer through them.

But this one was particularly odd and exotic. Really. Trust me.

How often have you flown over Greenland? Not just the tip of Greenland, like, 500 miles of it right in the middle?

Etihad Airlines flight 171, the nonstop from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles, has existed since June, and from the moment it debuted, it was the third-longest regularly scheduled commercial flight.

I mentioned this after we booked it.

Now we have flown it.

It was at least as bad as we thought on a couple of levels.

It was better in one crucial, saving way.

First, the issues.

–The flight is pegged at 16.5 hours to cover 8,390 miles. And the travel experience took seven hours longer than that … because Abu Dhabi International shut down for fours this morning due to morning fog. Forty-four flights were canceled or delayed, with ours falling in the latter category. For four-plus hours today. After we had arrived three hours early for the flight. Which made it about a 26-hour ordeal from door to door.

–More than 16 hours from closing the door to getting off the plane … is a really long time. You fly for eight hours, which is longer than NYC to Paris, and you haven’t reached half way.

–Even though it was “day”, for most of this flight, nearly the whole of it was flown in the dark. We didn’t get off the ground until nearly 2 p.m., and by the time we got to, say, Moscow, the sun disappeared over the horizon. And stayed gone. Up over Finland. Over Sweden. Over Norway. Over the Norwegian Sea, north of Iceland. And then across Greenland. Lots of turbulence over Greenland. Whether that is typical, I don’t know; I’ve never flown across the middle of Greenland.

So, what made this not The Worst Flight Ever?

The fact that it was remarkably (shockingly, wonderfully) empty inside the plane. At least in coach.

We were in the back few rows of the plane, in a section meant to seat at least 100 people, but no more than 30 were in there.

We each got a row of four seats to ourselves.

What a concept, right? Most flights, an empty seat next to you … reason to party.

We each were alone in a group of four seats — which is enough to stretch out and lay down, once the arm rests are pushed up.

Leah slept at least eight of the 16 hours. I slept about four. And it was something resembling real sleep.

The only creepy part of it was the turbulence, while sleeping. We couldn’t figure out a way to belt ourselves in, while laying. The belts are meant for vertical humans; not horizontal. And the possibility of a sudden drop sending us hurtling towards the ceiling … yeah, it was there.

We were fed “lunch” twice, once soon after departure, once just before landing. Plus a dry chicken sandwich in between.

The flight attendants did come through fairly regularly with trays of water. Spend that long in a plane, and a body begins to dehydrate.

At times, then, the flight felt like a sort of adventure in travel. Up at 38,000 feet, flying over huge tracts of nothingness (see: Baffin Island), trying to figure out if that carpet of white down below was clouds (usually) or miles and miles and miles of ice. (This is Inuit territory; not even Canadians live up there.)

And then the dive back towards warmer climes, almost due south, over the Yukon and Manitoba and Minnesota and Wyoming, thinking of those freezing people down below, feeling disconnected from the world.

We tried to envision how horrible it would have been to be in a sitting position for 16.5 hours. And “pretty horrible” was the clear answer. We were thrashed, at the end. Even with all the extra space we could ever hope for.

Next week, we still get to go back the other direction, which is slightly shorter. In theory.

But we wonder how long Etihad flight 171 (and 170, the return from LAX) will be in business. Can an operator continue to fly with 70 percent of coach empty?

We are considering flying this route again next July. If we’re lucky, it will still exist. If we’re lucky, it will have disappeared and we will break up the journey into two more-digestible bits.

Hard to decide which would be better.