Flight Attendants Ration Pringles on Sixteen-Hour Nightmare Flight From LAX to JFK

[RamboLiberal]

You know when you get on a plane and you didn't plan ahead, so you have to eat whatever weird snacks they drag up and down the aisle and sell for $6 a pop? There's no healthy option, certainly, so you have to choose between biscotti and a plate of weird cheese cubes, and maybe, if you're lucky, a sandwich of something only moderately gross, like almond butter and banana. Well, over the weekend a Virgin America flight full of passengers traveling from Los Angeles to New York found themselves stuck onboard for seven hours in the air and seven hours on the ground in Newburgh, New York, after having been diverted from the city as result of the storm.

During that fourteen-hour ordeal, the food slowly began to run out on the plane. (Presumably, the alcohol was all chugged by hour six.) By the end of it, flight attendants were doling out the last remaining snacks (Pringles, of course), giving each person a measly four potato chips. To add insult to injury, there was only a half-cup of water per person to wash down those salty, delicious pieces of fat and chemicals. And that doesn't even take into account that there were three screaming babies and a pissed-off celebrity (Carrie Ann Inaba of Dancing With the Stars) onboard. That just might be the perfect storm of terrible onboard airplane conditions, minus maybe having to listen to an overly chipper flight crew or sitting next to a person who is exercising his or her right to not buy two seats even though really their ass occupies more than one.

But that wasn't all. After waiting until midnight at a small airport in the middle of nowhere, the passengers were finally let off the plane and piled into buses, which drove them to JFK. While they were on the two-hour drive, air conditions finally cleared up and the Virgin airplane flew back, too, beating them there.



Read more: Flight Attendants Ration Pringles on Sixteen-Hour Nightmare Flight From LAX to JFK -- Daily Intel http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2010/03/flight_attendants_ration_pring.html#ixzz0iMMI2LLE

BTW, wouldn't Virgin be in violation of the new tarmac law? Is it in effect?

[Renew Deal]

1. Newburgh isn't that far from NYC

And it's not really the middle of nowhere.

[RamboLiberal]

2. Well you know to a writer from NYC

Anywhere outside the city is probably the middle of nowhere.

[Better Today]

3. I thought there were new rules about keeping folks on board while

a plane was on the ground. I don't remember the specifics, but even without those rules, WTF didn't they just let people out, or send the flight attendants out to get more food, or call locally for someone to bring them in some necessitities? Why didn't the passengers revolt and demand the cabin be opened and they be freed? This makes no sense, we have become a senseless nation.

[Blue_Tires]

6. if it's like that case in Minnesota last year

iirc, the post-9/11 laws dictate that no commercial plane passengers can be let into a terminal that doesn't have any TSA people on duty, and a small place like that may have only had 1 or 2 TSA agents who were not on duty or had gone home for the night (that's what happened in MN)...

i never fail to be amazed at the new and innovative ways to turn commercial flying into torture...

[Better Today]

10. Always a friggin' loophole.

[Jim__]

4. Why were they kept in the plane while it was on the ground?

That's horseshit.

[Raschel]

5. Still don't understand how they can hold people hostage. You give up your rights when

you get on a plane?

[SoCalDem]

11. Really makes one long for days-past.

[Crabby Appleton]

7. Shoulda called to have pizza delivered to the plane

[marmar]

8. As if having to deal with LAX and JFK wasn't punishment enough.....

.... I can't think of two less pleasant big airports.

[Initech]

9. I probably wouldve gone postal if I were on that flight.

Been there, done that, never want to do it again.

[kestrel91316]

12. Next time I fly, I'll remember to smuggle some string cheese aboard.

[ProdigalJunkMail]

13. I read that as LGA to JFK...

needless to say I was a little shocked at the concept... sP