Passengers Beg Flight Crew To Let Them Off A Plane During Stop Over After It Failed To Land At Their Final Destination Several Times

Turbulent flights can be terrifying. Harsh weather conditions account for 1 out of 10 fatal plane accidents. When conditions were so bad that the pilots couldn’t even get the plane to the final destination, it’s no wonder these passengers were scared.

But the flight crew wouldn’t allow it when they tried to get off the plane.

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They refused to let them off the plane as it was stopped at a nearby airport.

According to Inside Edition, a JetBlue flight that departed from Cancun and was set for JFK International Airport in New York City ran into some tough flying conditions in April 2022. After repeated failed attempts to land the plane at JFK, the pilots opted to land at Newark Liberty International Airport in New Jersey, just 33 miles away from their final destination. 

However, the passengers were not allowed off the plane. They began protesting, and 26-year-old Sabrina Ettinger captured the ordeal on video.

“Look, man, I’ll do something crazy. You can arrest me. I don’t want to go back up in the air,” one man said. Another calm and collected passenger stood in the aisle, addressing the crew. “Officer, my kids are panicking. People are sick back there. We got to get off this plane. It’s dangerous. We tried to land four times already,” he explained. “We’re scared to fly. We want to get off.”

“Take me to jail. I don’t care,” another passenger added.

The calm man details how long they’d been stuck on the plane. “[We’ve been on this plane for] six hours. It’s a three-hour flight. It’s not your fault. It’s not their fault. We just want to get off,” he said.

One crew member responded that they needed to arrive at JFK, but the man quickly countered. “I don’t care about JFK. It’s our lives,” he said.

He remarked that there were passengers vomiting and fainting. Unfortunately, it didn’t matter. The passengers were not allowed off the plane while they waited for one hour in Newark until they took off for their final destination. Luckily, they arrived at JFK safely.

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People in the comments bashed JetBlue and the flight crew for not letting them off.

“Honestly if everyone is saying they want to leave and people are passing out and throwing up I would want off too,” one person wrote.

But why were they not allowed off the plane? One person pointed out that the airport could have processed the passengers if they had done some extra work.

“How hard would it have been for [management] to call in a customs officer?” they wrote. “Tired of so many laws taking precedence over human comfort.”

JetBlue spokesman Derek Dombrowski clarified to the New York Post that the Newark airport didn’t have the proper facilities to process them being passengers on an international flight.

“Without proper customs processing available for the flight at Newark, the aircraft remained on the ground for 60 minutes and once the weather cleared departed again for JFK where it safely landed,” he wrote in an email.

Dombrowski apologized for the instance, attributing blame to the weather conditions. “We apologize for the inconvenience this weather-related diversion created,” he wrote. As for the passengers, JetBlue offered them $50 each in flight credits.

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Ethan Cotler is a writer living in Boston. He writes on entertainment and news.