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Virgin Pilot Says He Was Threatened With Arrest

virginflight.jpg Virgin-gate continues! Reportedly the pilot on the Virgin Atlantic flight, that ended with passengers baking inside of the aircraft on the tarmac for four hours, asked to get passengers off the plane once they landed in Connecticut. The airline says he was threatened with arrest by customs officials, but customs denies the allegation.

Passengers were kept on the plane because there was only one customs official at Bradley international Airport on Tuesday night, and the captain was told the passengers needed to stay put until more immigration officials arrived—which took hours. Passengers are hoping that the U.S. Transportation Department officials listen to audio recordings between pilots and customs officials to clarify what happened.

Founder of Flyersrights.org, Kate Hanni, says the Transportation Department should be including Customs and Border Patrol and the TSA in regulations related to tarmac strandings, noting, "They appear to be a roadblock. Often airlines tell us customs or TSA refused to allow passengers off planes."

This week's incident is still under investigation; passengers finally arrived at their destination of Newark, NJ yesterday.

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Comments [rss]

  • mocanlagunas

    I think that Keeping the passengers informed would help... the same when we're stuck in the subway.

  • longacre

    This happens a couple of times a month during the summer...thunderstorms tend to arrive in the NYC area in the late afternoon, around the same time as the peak arrival time for flights from Europe. Bradley and Newburgh are frequently used because they have long runways which can handle the larger planes normally used on int'l flights and they're relatively empty, but neither of them have full time customs facilities. It is not unusual for passengers to be stranded for hours when this happens, but this one made the news due to the air conditioning problem.

    International flights should not be allowed to divert to airports without customs staff on duty unless there is an actual emergency. Boston would have been smartest, Philadelphia or Dulles would have been good too if they had enough fuel (I'm guessing they did not and/or they were getting hit by storms, too).

  • Jesse

    To bad the government cant be sued for this happening constantly

  • LeLY

    The government should be sued for people ending up in Newark.

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