By Andrew Gibson
An Airbus A380 was delayed at Heathrow Airport for eight hours due to bad weather conditions. It was a Middle East Airlines plane which was on its way to Beirut. The 230 passengers became increasingly annoyed about the delay.
A selection of them began confronting the cabin crew and some fights started. Reports said that there was some pushing and shoving and even some fistfights. The situation was so bad that eight police officers boarded the plane to break things up. It was around 5pm when the passengers began to be rude to the cabin crew but within a hour police had calmed the situation down and a few hours later the flight left with no further problems.
According to the Middle East Airlines’ UK and Ireland Manage, Naima Kassir, the captain of the plane had decided that due to the unpredictability of the weather, passengers should stay aboard so they would not miss the opportunity to take off when the weather cleared. However, the thunder storms and high winds continued for hours. On that day there were a selection of flights cancelled and some arrivals were also called off. These sorts of situations can be extremely annoying for travellers. The weather is something that cannot be controlled but it can still be very annoying when flights are delayed and cancelled because of it and sometimes people do not understand why the flights cannot be taken. Good communication with passengers in this situation seems to be key to keeping the complaints to a minimum but some people will still get agitated, whatever the situation.
