Long Night's Journey Into Day For Continental Express 2816

Passengers Kept On Plane Overnight

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By its sixth hour sitting on a deserted tarmac, Continental Express Flight 2816 had taken on the smell of diapers and an overwhelmed lone toilet.

What should have been a 2 1/2-hour trip from Houston to Minneapolis had moved into its ninth hour, and the 47 passengers on board had burned through the free pretzels and drinks handed out early in their Friday night flight from Houston.

Yeah, just from the opening paragraphs you can tell this won't end well.

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Flight 2816 left Houston on Friday at 9:23 p.m., scheduled to arrive in Minneapolis by midnight. Instead, severe
weather forced air controllers to divert the plane south to nearby Rochester, where it landed after midnight.

In Minneapolis, Continental's dispatchers decided to wait out the storms rather than cancel the flight and bus passengers the remaining 85 miles.

Wait, it gets better...

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The passengers remained calm, Christin said. But he described a difficult environment where sleep was scarcely
possible, with babies crying out every 5 to 10 minutes and not enough blankets or pillows to go around.

Adding to the frustration, he said: Periodic announcements that led passengers to think they would soon be moving again. One announcement said a bus would soon arrive to take them to Minneapolis; an hour later, passengers were told the bus solution wasn't ready.

If this isn't someone's personal vision of hell, then they are really lacking imagination.

And of course, everyone is blaming everyone else for this massive screw-up

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Kristy Nicholas, a spokeswoman for ExpressJet Airlines, said passengers couldn't go to the Rochester terminal to wait out the storms because they would have needed to redo their security screening and screeners had gone home.

The airport's manager, Steven Leqve, said that wasn't true. Leqve said passengers could simply have waited in a secure area until their plane was cleared to leave.

Just reading this made me feel uncomfortable and cramped.

Ugh planes are really just (usually) moving torture chambers.

I was listening to the news earlier and they interviewed one of the passengers on there. He said the toilet was broken when they were finally in air.

This story is just... wtf?

Once I travelled for 22 hours on a train without lights, heating, and drinking water - at night, across the Alps in early March. By the time we arrived, some scenes had occurred which wouldn't have been out of place in If This Be a Man.
I wonder how the passengers managed not to snap for good - must've been a planeful of clerics.

I must agree with all previous comments: this sounds like my idea of the utter, nethermost pit of hell. Of course it *would* be a plane with loads of babies on it that this happened to.

Remind me again why Continental is still in business?

Because as it turns out, people will put up with almost anything in the name of cheap tickets. I think it's time for a few more airlines to fold.

Mafiosa wrote:

Ugh planes are really just (usually) moving torture chambers.

Reminds me of something my dad said, "transporting any animal other than humans in those conditions would be illegal".

And I thought Finnair was bad with their schedules blowing, but at least they get their customers out of the plane.

I can just imagine the smell of faeces, soy sauce and barf there. Makes me want to fly even less now.

Reminds me of the scene in one of Douglas Adams' books (think it was Life, the Universe, and Everything but I'm not sure) where the spaceship sat in the hangar for like millions of years, waiting for a delivery of lemon-soaked paper napkins.
Those poor people. (On the airplane, I mean.)

This is why, as soon as I have the funds saved up to make it viable, I will never fly on an airliner again.

Fairlight wrote:

Reminds me of something my dad said, "transporting any animal other than humans in those conditions would be illegal".

Actually, that's literally true. We had a 8-hour-layover coming home recently, and one of the things I read was the requirements for pet carriers.
Among them was the animal being able to walk around at any time, be able to lay down, lie down comfortably, beverage & food containers (full).

unskilled78 wrote:

Fairlight wrote:

Reminds me of something my dad said, "transporting any animal other than humans in those conditions would be illegal".

Actually, that's literally true. We had a 8-hour-layover coming home recently, and one of the things I read was the requirements for pet carriers.
Among them was the animal being able to walk around at any time, be able to lay down, lie down comfortably, beverage & food containers (full).

Yup. What I know on the subject of animal transportation: If traveling lasts more than 8hours, at least horses should be taken out for a walk(Two of my horses were transported to Finland from Central Europe). If the poor people just hadn't been humans, peta would be raging out in the streets right now.

Yeah, PETA will leap to the defense of vermin, but they won't lift a finger for Homo Sapiens.

Lovely bunch, aren't they?