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Plane sit-in forces airline to pay up

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  1. #1

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    Plane sit-in forces airline to pay up

    Hong Kong News Headlines | Hong Kong's premier newspaper online | SCMP.com

    Protest by passengers over nine-hour flight delay from Singapore triples cash compensation offer

    Passengers furious that their flight was delayed for nearly nine hours managed to triple the compensation offered by the airline by staging a sit-in on the plane.

    A total of 159 travellers on the Hong Kong Airlines flight from Singapore were offered HK$400 before they landed at Chek Lap Kok at 5.30am yesterday.

    But 80 of them said they weren't happy with the amount and refused to get off. Police were called as negotiations continued and 59 disembarked. But at 9am, 21 passengers still remained on board.

    The four Hongkongers and 17 mainlanders eventually left the plane at 10.30am but continued their protest in the arrivals hall.

    The mainland passengers, a tour group from Shenzhen, displayed placards accusing Hong Kong Airlines of being liars.

    The protest finally ended at 1.30pm when the mainlanders showed the delay had caused the cancellation of their hotel rooms in Hong Kong. The airline raised the compensation to HK$1,200 and offered a coach to take them home.

    One of the mainlanders told iCable TV they refused to leave the plane because the airline kept lying. She said: "The amount of the compensation is not important. Their attitude was very poor."

    The passengers were stranded when an Airbus 330 flight due to leave Singapore at 4.40pm on Tuesday was grounded by a technical fault.

    A male passenger, surnamed Leung, said the delay caused uproar among some passengers at the airport's check-in counter.

    "They were dissatisfied and blocked a section of a walkway," he said. "Police were called in. One female officer rammed a luggage trolley into the crowd injuring an elderly [female] passenger."

    The passenger suffered minor injuries to her hand. An airline spokeswoman said meal coupons and refreshments were offered to the passengers and another aircraft - a Boeing 737-88 - was arranged.

    "It was scheduled to leave Singapore at 12.21am but some passengers refused to go on board and caused a delay for about an hour," she said.

    The flight, HX784, finally took off at 1.30am. According to the airline, all 159 passengers were offered compensation of HK$400 before the plane landed in Hong Kong.

    But the airline called police for help at about 6.30am when 80 passengers dissatisfied with the amount of compensation refused to get off.

    "Because of the airport security policy, we had to call police for assistance as they refused to get off for more than half an hour," the spokeswoman said.

    No one was arrested, but the airline said it would contact the authorities in Singapore for information about the scenes at the airport there.

  2. #2

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    power of the unions, the people who waited 9 hours and got off as soon as they could missed out on 800 bucks.

    Good for those guys taking a page out of occupy wall street, they got what they wanted.


  3. #3

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    Good for them, they would have lost their hotel bookings!


  4. #4

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    This incident got me thinking . . . any chance the scenario would have gone down as it did if the passengers were flying from say Beijing to Xi'an on a regional Chinese airline?

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    I thought it was stupid myself. If you fly a budget airline then you expect hiccups and it sounds like this little group hugely disrupted all the other passengers who just want to get on with the flight after the (obviously annoying, but not exactly rare) delay. What did they expect? To fly in a broken aircraft? perhaps that IS what the Chinese expect!


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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    I thought it was stupid myself. If you fly a budget airline then you expect hiccups and it sounds like this little group hugely disrupted all the other passengers who just want to get on with the flight after the (obviously annoying, but not exactly rare) delay. What did they expect? To fly in a broken aircraft? perhaps that IS what the Chinese expect!
    Well yes - but instead of arriving early evening, they arrived the following morning. They would at the very least lose a night's accommodation which very probably cost more than HKD400 if not their whole reservations.

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    Quote Originally Posted by MovingIn07:
    a budget airline then you expect hiccups ...
    A nine hour delay is a "hiccup"?

  8. #8

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    Sounds like PART of the delay was caused by passengers refusing to board the replacement flight tho...not that i'm excusing the airline for cocking up things in the first place...just seems like typical behaviour from our friends up north...(flame suit on)

    Sent from my GT-I9000 using GeoClicks Mobile

    Last edited by anothercanuck; 17-11-2011 at 02:08 PM.
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  9. #9

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    One hour. This was at midnight so they still would have lost their night in a hotel.


  10. #10

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    Quote Originally Posted by Satay Sue:
    Well yes - but instead of arriving early evening, they arrived the following morning. They would at the very least lose a night's accommodation which very probably cost more than HKD400 if not their whole reservations.
    But if they arrive early morning they don't need the hotel anymore do they?

    If you fly an airline that only has a couple of flights a day, you lose hours if the plane has a fault. That's well known. Similar problem flying AirNZ to Europe, great prices; great service, if there is a problem you get a 24 hour delay (happened to me and to a friend on separate occasions). So many people don't appear to know anything about airlines when they book their flights. NOT ALL AIRLINES ARE THE SAME! If you buy your ticket based solely on price and ignore everything you open up to these kinds of problems.

    If you care about arriving for a particular time, ensure you have a buffer relevant to the airline you are flying.....

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