Backed-up Toilets, No Water as Fliers Stranded 7 Hours

At least 4 planes stuck on tarmac in Connecticut on Saturday
By Matt Cantor,  Newser Staff
Posted Oct 31, 2011 7:00 AM CDT
Backed-up Toilets, No Water as Fliers Stranded 7 Hours
JetBlue and American Airlines passengers were stuck for hours on the tarmac.   (AP Photo/Reed Saxon)

Passengers on three JetBlue planes and an American Airlines plane found themselves stuck on the tarmac near Hartford, Conn., for 7 hours or more on Saturday after being diverted from New York-area airports—and when they were finally allowed out, many had no choice but to sleep in the terminal. Passengers told their stories to the AP: One man whose flight from Fort Lauderdale was rerouted says he sat there from 1:30pm to 9pm; snacks and bottled water ran out, and "the toilets were backed up. When you flushed, nothing would happen."

One man on an American Airlines flight from France says passengers heard a range of reasons for the delay, from the need to refuel to the airport's limited capacity for handling international flights. A traveler from Boston had a similar experience. “We were told we were the third plane in line to get to the gate when we landed," he said. "Then we stayed on the plane for seven hours." JetBlue confirmed that thanks to a “confluence of events,” such as equipment failures that prevented planes from landing in low visibility at New York-area airports, some of its planes were diverted to Bradley International Airport, where power outages reportedly made deplaning tricky. A JetBlue pilot, meanwhile, complained that he couldn’t “seem to get any help from our own company.” (More JetBlue stories.)

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