I wrote at the weekend about another United plane diversion. This time as a result of a disruptive passenger who apparently demanded nuts or crackers about 10 minutes after take off, and he wasn’t given a second serving became abusive. This caused the captain to dump 50,000 litres of fuel and to divert to Belfast. (I mean they weren’t even warm nuts that he wanted.)
The passengers spent a miserable night on the floor of the airport.
Of course, the disruptive passenger could have been hungry after the three hour delay at Rome I suppose.
Jeremiah Mathias Thede, 42, an American citizen with an address of The Alameda, Berkley, California, was arrested and appeared before magistrates on Monday. He was remanded and will appear by video link next week, presumably to make a second bail application.
The BBC has some handheld video of Mr. Thede being removed on this page. He seems calm at this point.
Where are you getting that price tag from? Surely not just the fuel which was dumped.
@Wandering Aramean – It’s from the BBC. The radio said that it included compensation that they are going to pay the passengers.
Nuts!
Ooh Hazelnuts!
California makes ’em and (If I had my way)
He’d be covered in concrete!
A three hour delay might leave someone with low blood sugar. How was it better to dump fuel and inconvenience an entire planeload of people than just give him some more food? Sounds like a stupid decision to me all around. The guy was a doofus too.
Not a lot of information out there, but after flying United 40 times over the last year, it’s hard to believe that they made good decisions.
Give the guy some damn crackers unless he was actually threatening. Do these flight crews even realize that they are customer service representatives?