Etihad passengers in tiff with crew after 12-hour wait on tarmac

January 05, 2015 08:00 am | Updated 08:00 am IST - SAN FRANCISCO

Hundreds of travellers landed in San Francisco, safe but irritated after a 28-hour overseas flight they say included 12 hours on a tarmac in the Middle East without food or accurate flight information.

Tempers grew short on Etihad Airways Flight 183 when fog in Abu Dhabi delayed takeoff for a half-day, passengers told KGO .

“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 finally landing in the city on Saturday evening.

Passengers said the 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.

Etihad said in a statement on its website that fog had delayed flights and caused airport congestion.

0 / 0
Sign in to unlock member-only benefits!
  • Access 10 free stories every month
  • Save stories to read later
  • Access to comment on every story
  • Sign-up/manage your newsletter subscriptions with a single click
  • Get notified by email for early access to discounts & offers on our products
Sign in

Comments

Comments have to be in English, and in full sentences. They cannot be abusive or personal. Please abide by our community guidelines for posting your comments.

We have migrated to a new commenting platform. If you are already a registered user of The Hindu and logged in, you may continue to engage with our articles. If you do not have an account please register and login to post comments. Users can access their older comments by logging into their accounts on Vuukle.