A three-hour delay may not be too outrageous, but what about waiting out that time in the aircraft cabin?
Footage went viral over the weekend showing livid passengers on board a Super Air Jet flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta. The passengers reportedly boarded the plane at 4:40pm but the flight had not taken off by 7:40pm.
A couple of passengers can be seen screaming at the crew and deciding upon themselves that they would exit the aircraft. All passengers eventually disembarked from the plane.
A direct flight from Jakarta to Yogyakarta takes around 1 hour and 15 minutes. That means, flight prep notwithstanding, the passengers waited in the cabin for longer than it would take to carry out a roundtrip flight between the two cities.
Ari Azhari, CEO of the relatively new airline, said the video was taken on Friday. He said that the flight’s pilot decided to postpone takeoff for airplane inspection after an unspecified indicator went off in the cockpit.
“Super Air Jet apologizes for the inconvenience. Super Air Jet managed the situation in accordance with existing protocols,” Ari said in a statement, but without explaining why the passengers were kept in the cabin for three hours.
The passengers eventually boarded another plane and reached their destination.
Under Indonesian commercial flight regulations, airlines are required to compensate each passenger with IDR300K (US$20.21) for a 3-4 hour delay. It’s not immediately clear if the passengers in the video received said compensation.
