Remote Canadian town receives passengers from diverted Delta flight
A Canadian province known for the warmth and hospitality shown to thousands of airline passengers who are then diverted the September 11 attacks has again received hundreds of surprise visitors – this time due to what Delta Air Lines described as a “mechanical problem” with one of its aircraft.
The company said the flight, which left Amsterdam on Sunday afternoon and was headed to Detroit, was forced to land in Happy Valley-Goose Bay, a coastal town of about 8,000 people in the northeastern province of Newfoundland and Labrador, after its engine failed. ice machine stopped working.
The 270 passengers, three pilots and seven flight attendants all spent the night in an army barracks in the city, a Delta spokesperson said by email.
“Crew duty times were impacted by weather and runway conditions at Goose Bay Airport, which forced the airport to suspend operations,” he said, noting that Delta sent additional aircraft to the airport to fly passengers to Detroit on Monday to transport. “We apologize to our customers for this inconvenience.”
Some passengers have described this on social media a trial where they waited more than 10 hours on the tarmac as weather conditions deteriorated and they waited for another plane to pick them up.
“Wildest emergency landing,” wrote a person.
Another pleaded: “Please send rescue!”
Trevor Wilson, a passenger returning home from a business trip in Europe, said in a telephone interview that he first noticed something was wrong when the flight path on the seatback screen appeared to him as a hairpin bend. to display. Shortly afterward, crew members told passengers about the problem with the defroster, Wilson, 42, said.
After waiting on the plane for several hours, the passengers were transferred to a second plane bound for Detroit, but were told that the crew’s overtime meant they could no longer legally fly the plane. The passengers were then given pizza, he added, and taken to the army barracks for the night.
The Delta spokesperson said the company had worked with officials in Goose Bay to arrange food, water and lodging and would compensate customers for the experience, but declined to go into details.
The Federal Aviation Administration did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday evening.
In 2001, thousands of airline passengers were stranded in Newfoundland and Labrador for days after dozens of planes were diverted to the province in the wake of the September 11 attacks in the United States. The majority of those planes were diverted to Gander, a city in the northeastern part of the province whose goodwill during a global crisis inspired the award-winning musical “Come From Away.”
Mr. Wilson, the passenger on the Delta plane, said he thought of the musical almost immediately when he heard about the diversion to Canada. “This is a small town, and the people there just really wanted to help us,” he said, noting that locals had helped ferry passengers onto buses and made hot chocolate for them.
He added: “Everyone was super, super, super nice.”