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.
What I’m wondering is what they’d do if you told the flight attendant you’re having chest pains and a shooting pain in your left arm. They’re not going to want to hold a person on board who may require emergency medical treatment. You might not make it back on board that particular flight, but with that kind of delay I’d probably just rather rebook anyway.
Yeah, they’d take the plane straight back to a gate and pass you off to EMS. And then leave without you.
If they have a six hour delay, I probably have some padding in that timeline. They’d hook me up and say “It’s just a panic attack, here’s some O2” and send me on my way. Then I’m either getting back on the plane, rescheduling with the ticket desk, or hitting up a bar and heading home until tomorrow.
As a fat man nearing middle age I think I just found my superhero origin story.
Based on personal experience, they take you off the plane to a medical team who will evaluate you, run an EKG for example. They can refuse to let you board another flight depending on their evaluation.
The worst is when you fall asleep on the plane for ages, wake up in your seat, and they still haven’t taken off.
It’s more work for them and I guess more work costs them more money?
I’m not sure why deplaning passengers would cost more money. The flight crew and terminal operators are still working throughout the period. The one thing I can see oosssibly causing an issue is going back to the terminal and u loading the luggage, but it literally happens every day. I can’t see it taking more than about 30 minutes based on my experiences.
If you’re parked at the gate you incur gate fees.
The staff that was boarding the plane may be working on boarding other planes now. The gate may no longer be available and taking one may require coordination with another plane and that could also cause delays to the other plane. The ground staff needed to get the plane to the gate would be needed again. There’s plenty of staff that’s not in the plane that’s needed that are probably busy working on other planes.
Let them out in a designated area next to the plane, I’ve been deboarded outside the terminal before, just walked down steps right onto the tarmac.
That still requires organizing busses and everything.
I took a flight from Miami to LA. A bachelorette in the back of the plane had a panic attack (alcohol may or may not have been involved) and we had to stop in Austin to drop her off. I can’t imagine what it cost to do that or what consequence she may have suffered. Traveling is stressful for everyone but starting out with a four hour unexplained wait had to be unbearable.
If the passengers disembark the airlines have to pay more money to the airport authority so they keep everyone on board to save money. They only car about how much money they can extract from passengers not their comfort.
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.
https://www.flyingmag.com/guides/flight-attendants-pay-per-hour/#:~:text=Flight attendants are only paid,the cabin door is closed.
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
Profit margins on flights average around 9%. A plane that deboards is a loss of tens of thousands of dollars. Executives get bonuses based on the airline’s profitability.
https://scholarworks.lib.csusb.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2885&context=etd
You think an airline is pissing off customers with long delays for the lolz? Why would they do that if they could save money by deboarding?