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.”
I’ll never ever understand why they do not simply let the passengers deboard the aircraft, nor why consumers put up with this kind of shoddy treatment. The terminal is right there. Let the people wait out whatever bad weather or maintenance issue the airline is having in the comfort of the terminal.
To demand anything less is simply a failure in logistics. The customer should never have to sit on a plane for any longer than an hour without it taking off once boarding is complete and the doors are sealed.
I always told myself I’d be the guy to do this if I ever found myself in a similar situation. To be honest, I’m not sure I could go for nearly 5 hours without the plane taxiing. 3 hours would probably be my limit before I decided it would be preferable to spend my time in a jail cell rather than an airplane.
Talking completely out of my rear end here but whenever something like that happens it is usually a liability issue. Neither the airline - let alone the crew want passengers anywhere outside their plane after boarding. There’s a billion things that could go wrong if they left the plane. The crew could have likely fixed the issue with free drinks or something like that but then again, liability…
Deboarding happens all the time. Passengers board, malfunction detected, everyone is taken off the plane. There is absolutely no liability to deboarding.
The only issue was some manager’s bonus was at risk if they didn’t have 100% departures.
It seems a bit odd to me that the crew would stick up for some manager this much. Especially since the plane did not depart in time either way. I’m leaning towards something going wrong with the communication between the airport and crew, resulting in them having no permission to deboard the plane but your guess is as good as mine.
The crew gets paid hourly with the clock starting only after the doors close. They don’t get paid for all the time waiting for boarding/deboarding or other delays when they aren’t on the plane with the doors closed. It doesn’t matter to them whether they are in the air or not. Tarmac delays increase crew pay because longer turn around means more hours paid.
In the US, after many high profile incidents, DOT rules require that the plane offers deboarding after 3 hours. But this wasn’t the US so abusing the passengers for profit is legal.
https://www.cntraveler.com/story/tarmac-delay-rules
There was no miscommunication. It was profit motivated.
I could see the crew having a profit incentive if what you said is true but that’s a different argument
I already linked proof that crew are paid starting when the door closes? It was in the news during the last airline strike.
Yeah but again that’s not what you said before. Before that it was le evil manager guy not risking his booonus
I think this framing is extremely disingenuous in the title. It’s the same kind of bullshit that resulted in the misframing of the McDonald’s hot coffee suit.
It’s framed perfectly. Did you just not bother to read all of it or something?
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.”
Yeah, businesses really need to understand that their ‘procedures’ don’t trump passengers’ pragmatism.
4 fucking hours? I’m surprised more people didn’t join him. That’s an honest load of bullshit.
Is everything fucked after the pandemic? I’m from India and I’ve heard some very bad stories about both plane and train travels.
Its not as bad as living in India, but it does suck.
What’s wrong with living in India?
Seriously? Do you follow the news at all?
Do you follow the news at all?
Not intentionally, no. All news sucks.
