Miserable passengers remained on Etihad Airways flight 183 for 12 hours while it was stuck in Abu Dhabi. (Photo: AP)
Passengers
were livid after landing in San Francisco following a half-day delay
that left them stranded on the tarmac in Abu Dhabi without adequate food
or information about what was happening.
Fog in Abu Dhabi delayed takeoff for Etihad Airways Flight 183 for twelve hours during which time the passengers were kept on the plane.
"They
kept telling us that we were going to leave, you know 15 minutes from
now, 20 minutes from now, 30 minutes for now, for 12 hours," passenger
Thomas Piani told reporters in San Francisco after landing on Saturday
evening.
According
to the Associated Press, passengers said flight crew told them the Abu
Dhabi airport was too crowded with other stranded flights to allow them
to get off the plane to wait.
"Everybody
was fighting with each other, and the flight attendants were fighting
with us, and we were fighting with the flight attendants," passenger
Venkatesh Pahwa said.
The
airline told Yahoo Travel in a statement that “passengers were provided
with refreshments and were updated about the reasons for the rolling
delay caused by extreme weather conditions.”
The
airline insists that the “delay was compounded by the requirement they
replace the aircraft’s ultra-long haul operating crew who had exceeded
their flight limitations.”
Flight
attendants eventually passed out sandwiches and water after some people
made a fuss over the lack of food, passenger Ravali Reddy told the
Associated Press.
"No
one was angry about the delay itself. If it’s unsafe to fly, we don’t
want to fly," she said. "It just didn’t seem to make any logical sense
why we had to stay on the plane."
https://www.yahoo.com/travel/airline-passengers-trapped-on-plane-for-12-hour-107219945567.html?hp=1
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