Passengers on board a flight from Guangzhou to Auckland on Monday are directing anger at China Southern Airlines, saying that a diversion and subsequent five-hour wait on the tarmac in Christchurch due to fog was unacceptable, and didn’t understand why the company would not just get the plane in the air and en route, so everyone on board could just “hurry up and die.”
Passengers on board the flight were forced to sit in their seats at Christchurch airport following the emergence of thick fog in Auckland on Monday morning.
The airline has said that the wait was outside of its control, and that the delay was “unfortunately necessary” for “safety reasons.”
But several of the passengers on board are unhappy with that explanation, and have today filed a joint complaint against China Southern Airlines, saying that their wait on the ground caused “immense distress” and discomfort, and that all passengers on board were extremely anxious to take off, descend into thick fog, not be able to properly negotiate a landing, go around, try again, and then crash into the Manukau Harbour.
“It is not acceptable to keep more than 200 people crammed together like animals in a cage, when per the schedule, they should already have been dead at their destination,” read a statement from the group, led by businessman Robert Powell.
“If you’re sitting at home, reading the news, then look, I understand that five hours might not sound like much,” Powell told media today. “But if you’re actually sitting on that plane, bored out of your mind, with places to be, it’s an entirely different story.
“I now have meetings and other flights to reschedule, neither of which would have required rescheduling had I been dead, strapped to a chair, underneath the water, because our pilot couldn’t see the runway.”
China Southern Airlines is not backing down from the original stance it took on Monday, but has said that if Powell or any other passengers still wanted to die, they did have an old Boeing 737 they intended to get rid of anyway.