At first it sounds like a typical case of bad behavior aboard airplanes.
The Mexico City International Airport acknowledged in a statement Friday that a man had opened an emergency exit and walked out on a wing of a plane that was parked and waiting for takeoff Thursday.
The airport said the man had been turned over to police.
But dozens of fellow passengers signed a written copy of a statement saying the airline made them wait for four hours without ventilation or water while the flight was delayed. According to photos of the statement posted online, fellow passengers said he acted “to protect everyone, with the support of everyone.”
Flight tracking sites confirmed that flight AM672 to Guatemala City was delayed for 4 hours and 56 minutes Thursday.
The flight to Mexico city from Guatemala city, is a 3 hour trip. Those people had been waiting for nearly 5 hours just to take off.
because of a maintenance alert on the plane, the captain had to return to the gate for the required maintenance.”
Inconceivable that a safety check was requested after the people were on board and the money-for-services was exchanged.
A video apparently recorded aboard the flight showed passengers fanning themselves and asking a flight attendant for water.
Yea no, I thought we all agreed this was stupid penny pinching tactics.
I got stuck in a similar situation flying out of Venezuela when I was 15. It was a group trip and circumstances wound up being that all the adults ended up on a prior flight that left on time, like 20 minutes before ours was supposed to. We were on the tarmac in Venezuelan summer for 5 hours for the flight to Miami. We had air, but no AC and they wouldn’t provide food or water for… reasons? It was fucking brutal. I can’t imagine not even having air…
Happened to me coming out of Hawaii too. Four hour delay for maintenance. We had working blowers, but no AC; The air from the blowers was warm and humid after probably ~15 minutes. And just like you said, no food or water service from the attendants until we’re in the air.
Then we get through the maintenance, and the pilot comes on and (sounding very annoyed) goes “so I’ve just been notified that I have to do a fat stack of paperwork before we can leave. Looking at this packet, it’ll probably take me about an hour. We’re just going to deboard the plane for now so we can all get some fresh air. Go ahead and leave your luggage stowed since we’ll be right back on as soon as I finish this. Go hit the Chilis while you wait for me to finish this maintenance packet.”
Fuck. At least they let you deboard. We didn’t get any information about what was happening and I never found out what the delay was. Could have been a crash in the runway did all I know.
Plenty of systems require operation to know if they are functional or not. So it’s pretty easy to think of ways that the aircraft can indicate a malfunction when it’s first leaving the gate with passengers aboard.
That doesn’t mean it is any less shitty.
Yeah, you can’t really say “we started the engines but #2 wouldn’t start, so we’re continuing to the destination on one engine”. Delaying/cancelling the flight due to a safety/maintenance issue is perfectly legitimate.
The issue is that after that, a) passengers are entitled to compensation depending on the delay, and b) you need to provide food/water/aircon or take the passengers back to the terminal.
