Southwest Airlines flight delayed by mysterious aisle mess
A Southwest Airlines flight was delayed more than an hour after flight attendants refused to let the plane take off until a pile of rice was cleared from the aisle.
Passengers said the mess came about almost immediately after travelers began boarding planes from Atlanta, Georgia, to Houston, Texas, on Saturday.
Jennifer Schaper, who captured the incident on Twitter, wrote, “The flight attendant yelled “who spilled rice?” and walks up and down the aisles. They refuse to leave the gate until someone cleans the rice.’
No one would confess to spilling the food, and staff had to get a broom to clean it up before the flight could finally take off.
It comes after Southwest suffered a widespread technical glitch earlier this week and was revealed in exclusive data last year as the second worst airline for delays.
Passengers said the mess was made almost immediately after people began boarding planes from Atlanta, Georgia, to Houston, Texas, on Saturday.
Schaper dubbed the ordeal “#RiceGate” and tweeted, “The people in my line and I are now giggling and she’s eyeing us suspiciously.”
While the flight crew waited for a broom to clean up the mess, Schaper posted a video showing the attendant apologizing to passengers for the delay.
“We’re cleaning this rice so you don’t have to walk through it and it won’t be an eyesore,” she said over the speaker. “We apologize, but again, I don’t think you want to walk through it, so let’s just get it over with before we leave.”
Alongside a photo of the mess finally being cleaned up, Schaper tweeted, “Rice is being cleaned up but she is MAD. She has let us all know that we have not been brought up properly and she is disappointed in all of us.”
To make matters worse, Schaper added that the flight was further delayed because “an unwitting passenger took advantage of #RiceGate to use the bathroom and further delayed the flight.”
She later joked that she and her fight mates had nicknamed the flight ‘The Voyage of The Damned’.
When the flight finally landed in Houston, Schaper took to social media to provide an “update,” joking, “There were a few bumps, so they didn’t give us drink service.” I think it was punishment.’
She later told I LOVE she did not blame the servants for the ordeal. “It was the end of a long day and apparently they’d had a complete crew change. I’m sure they were tired. There was a delay and we were tired,” she said.
She added that whoever made the mess should have confessed and taken responsibility for it, but she couldn’t help but see the funny side of the incident.
‘The whole thing was very comical and I saw the light side of the situation. We’re all stuck there, might as well make it funny,” she said.
Passenger Jennifer Schaper live-tweeted the ordeal
Southwest also suffered a widespread technical glitch this week, causing thousands of delays
Servants had to fetch a broom to clean up a mysterious passenger’s mess
It is the latest tale of misery in a long string of incidents that have plagued the beleaguered airline in recent weeks.
A man had to be escorted off a Southwest flight by police on Wednesday as it landed in Orlando, Florida, after throwing an epic tantrum over a screaming child.
The passenger was taken to the air screaming and claimed the baby had cried non-stop for 45 minutes.
The ordeal unfolded when the flight was forced to hold on around the area outside of Palm Beach due to a bad weather front.
On Tuesday, Southwest had to ground all flights nationwide after a technical glitch, which led to 2,400 delayed flights.
The delay on departures caused a back-up of traffic at airports from Denver to New York City, and came just months after the airline endured an epic system crisis during the December holiday rush.
Exclusive data for DailyMail.com this week revealed that Southwest was one of the worst offenders for flight delays in the past year.
From April 2022 to April 2023, Southwest experienced delays on a quarter of its flights — second only to JetBlue Airways that 31.6% of its trips were late, according to flight tracking platform FlightAware.
A Southwest Airlines spokesperson told DailyMail.com: “This appears to be a normal departure and we have no reports of flight irregularities or details of passenger claims. It is not unusual for a flight attendant to request a broom from our airport staff so that the crew can clean up the plane before departure, if necessary.”