Bizarre reason pilot turned around plane mid-flight
A passenger plane has been forced to make a U-turn mid-flight, delaying those on board by about three hours.
Passengers were initially meant to board a 50-person United Express plane at Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport on October 16, but that plane became unavailable.
Instead, they were upgraded to a much larger ERJ-175 aircraft which departed just a few minutes behind schedule for Tennessee, USA Today reported.
Marissa Snow, a spokeswoman for Skywest (United Airlines’ partner company) ,told Yahoo Lifestyle about an hour into the flight passengers on board were told the plane needed to turn around.
Passenger Vince Fallon told USA Today passengers on board began to grumble on hearing the news.
Another passenger Jill Lohsen said those on board were kept in the dark.
“The pilot, nor the flight attendants, did not have any information for us and just kept saying they would figure it out when we land,” she said.
The plane returned to Chicago and passengers received a text message.
“Your 2.13pm United flight to Chattanooga is delayed because of unforeseen circumstances,” the text read.
“This is an unusual situation and we’re working hard to solve it. We value your time and we’re sorry for the inconvenience.”
Ms Snow told Yahoo Lifestyle what the “unforeseen circumstances were”.
It turns out the replacement plane was too big to land at the airport in Tennessee.
“We didn’t have the ground equipment there to handle that aircraft,” Ms Snow said.
Skywest said in a statement, the flight safely landed in Chicago and those on board departed for Tennessee on a “different aircraft”.
“We apologised to our passengers for the inconvenience and worked with our partner United to provide compensation,” the statement read.
When the flight landed safely in Chicago at 4.27 pm, passengers were provided with Cheez-Its, pretzels, and water, then assigned a new flight on a 50-seat Bombardier CRJ 200 that was scheduled to leave within the hour.
Each passenger was also given a US$300 flight voucher for a future trip.
Their new flight wound up landing in Chattanooga at 8.30 pm, three hours later than originally scheduled.
In other flight news, an elderly woman was on the receiving end of a vile racist outburst onboard a Ryanair flight earlier this week.
Disturbing footage shows a man verbally attacking the female passenger sitting one seat away from him during the flight between London and Barcelona on Friday.
In June, passengers on board a packed Alaska Airlines flight were left in awe of a kind-hearted teenage girl after she jumped into action to help a blind and deaf man.
Tim Cook, who was flying home after visiting his sister, is both blind and deaf and was unable to make any sort of communication with the flight attendants – who passengers said were doing their utmost to assist him.
That is when 15-year-old Clara Daly, who was travelling with her mother from Boston to Los Angeles via Portland, offered her assistance.
