Passengers on stuck flight outraged by lengthy tarmac delay
No fresh air, air conditioning and just crackers for food aboard a flight. It left passengers close to a riot on a plane grounded at a Colorado Springs tarmac.
But instead of rioting, they recorded it all on camera.
United Flight 4934 was left Kansas City Friday morning but was diverted to Colorado Springs due to lightning at a layover in Denver. But weren’t released from the plane for hours. Eventually, the flight was cancelled.
And even the crew members admitted, their treatment was wrong.
“This is a small operation here, they only have three gates here and they are not in the mood to deal with us,” a crew member onboard said to passengers during the flight. “They don’t have to do anything with us until we’ve been out here for three hours.”
Others on board were desperate to get out, but couldn’t.
“This was supposed to be a vacation with my mom to see my sister who’s sick and this is probably our last vacation,” said Vicky Minden, who was stuck on that flight. “If we exited the plane, we would not be allowed back on.”
But Colorado Springs Airport said it was confusion.
“There’s been miscommunication between pilots and passengers, stating that the airport wasn’t letting them taxi to the gate. That is not true, we do have space here. There’s been miscommunication on some end about the operations here dealing with the United flight,” said Heather Lenard, spokeswoman for Colorado Springs Airport.
Turning what was supposed to be a dream vacation.
“That two companies couldn’t come together on 70-100 people, I know to them it’s just business but to people on the plane it’s our heart,” Minden said. “We aren’t flying out of boredom. We had something to do.”
A bus finally took passengers to Denver at about 3:30 p.m. Friday.
Republic says passengers were offered the opportunity to deplane before the flight was eventually canceled. But that’s something multiple passengers deny.
It also says United is reaching out to customers to offer compensation.
