Passengers on a Thursday, 3:52 p.m. Delta Air Lines flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport to Miami International Airport did not depart New York until around 11:10 p.m., as the Airbus A230 experienced ground crew delays, bad weather and brawls.
Though Delta says customers were offered water, snacks and an opportunity to take a shuttle back to the terminal, some passengers lost the waiting game and started fighting.
One passenger, who uses the name Juan Andres Ahmad on Twitter, documented his experience from the fourth hour of the delay.
In his first two tweets, the disgruntled passenger claimed the captain didn’t know what was going on and that the flight attendants waited two hours before passing out water.
An hour later, airport police were called to respond to reports of a situation Ahmad described as both “verbal and physical.”
This has gotten out of control - there are people fighting each other and it’s gotten both verbal and physical. Police are on the plane! Complete chaos! I understand weather delays and we all want to be safe but this is not about weather but about how Delta has handled it. pic.twitter.com/byBjcrF7Rl
— Juan Andres Ahmad (@juanchi72) August 16, 2019
Journalist Glenna Milberg later tweeted a passenger’s footage of the exchanges going on between officers, the captain and a flight attendant, showing the level of confusion and frustration present in passengers and the crew. At the end of the clip, a woman and her son are seen leaving the aircraft to “get some air” amid the chaos.
👇🏼A small sample of the increasing chaos happening right now aboard Miami -bound Delta 2385.
— Glenna Milberg (@GlennaWPLG) August 16, 2019
It’s sitting on the tarmac at JFK for 8hrs now (!)... passengers kept onboard with no clear info and now armed officers responding to a fight...@Delta ? Response? pic.twitter.com/UgHhmGMJ59
Twitter user Amy Riley, another passenger, confirmed that while Delta did offer them the option to leave, they were not given any information on when they could rebook their trip if they got off the plane. Additionally, passengers’ checked bags were already en route to Miami.
“Passenger on the flight. It’s miserable. Started as a weather delay, then turned into an air traffic delay, then became a refueling delay. Flight attendants have admitted this is chaos and they know nothing. Claimed the gate crew ditched us at one point,” Jesse Greshin tweeted about the flight, calling it an “awful experience” from Delta.
Despite the chaos caught on camera, it’s unclear if the two individuals accused of fighting were actually thrown off the plane.
The flight, originally scheduled to land around 7:14 p.m. in Miami, touched down in the Sunshine State seven hours and 14 minutes later at 2:28 a.m.
