American Airlines passengers were stuck on a sweltering Boeing jet for more than an hour while waiting to depart from Miami to Costa Rica late Thursday night, two travelers told FOX Business.
The American Airlines Flight 1353 passengers say they were deplaned twice before being switched to another aircraft at Miami International Airport. Data from FlightAware says the Boeing 737 eventually left around five hours after scheduled departure and arrived in San Jose earlier this morning.
"All the little kids were crying, it got to the point that second time we were on there, where it was like, it had to be at least 95 degrees in there. It was ridiculous," passenger Daniel Solana, who says he was traveling with his 3-year-old son for a nephew’s baptism, told FOX Business. "The majority of the passengers were upset, they just wanted answers. Every time they deplaned us, they didn’t have answers."
One video obtained by FOX Business shows passengers trying to cool themselves off by waving sheets of paper as the flight’s captain is heard saying over the intercom "the power is just not working for us today." Another shows the plane’s lights flickering, leading a disgruntled passenger to complain "here we go again!"
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American Airlines did not respond Friday to a request for comment from FOX Business.
Solana says when he boarded the plane for the first time, "it was a little hot" and "they kept telling us we have some electrical problems, but they wouldn’t really tell us anything else."
After about an hour and twenty minutes, Solana says passengers were ordered off the plane.
"Basically they just said we are going to fix the plane and then we are going to go out, so we are all sitting in the terminal like, ‘ok you are going to fix a power failure?’ Especially with all the stuff that has been going on with Boeing and it was a 737 Boeing," he said.
Solana says passengers were then told to start boarding the same plane again, but it remained hot inside the cabin.
"Both times I was on the plane, I was drenched in sweat the whole time," he said. "I was going to the bathroom, getting napkins and wiping my face."
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After sitting on the tarmac for another hour, Solana says four to five attempts to turn on the plane’s engines without the help of generators weren’t successful, ultimately forcing a second deplaning. Some of the passengers, he said, were yelling "open the door, open the door it’s hot!"
Another passenger, Bobbie Barbour – who was traveling to Costa Rica with her mom for a wedding – told FOX Business "as soon as we were about to back out, the lights just went off again and the pilot kept trying to crank it and turn the plane back on, and that is when everybody started yelling."
Solana added: "This was already four hours – my whole thing was I was with my son, and there was more kids on the flight and it was hot. We didn’t get offered a bottle of water, or some chips or anything and that was my whole gripe with them."
Eventually the passengers were placed on a second aircraft that was "nice and cold" compared to the first, according to Solana, but they had to wait just a bit longer to depart as the cabin crew had to remove an "overly intoxicated" passenger and his luggage.
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"When we got here" in Costa Rica, "funny enough, the jet bridge was broken," Solana also said.
