The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the incident.
More than 200 passengers of US-based Delta Airlines were forced to spend the night on a remote Canadian military base after the plane made an emergency landing due to a technical issue, as per a report in CBS News. Delta Flight 135 carrying 270 customers, three pilots and seven flight attendants from Amsterdam to the US, was diverted to Goose Bay Airport, a remote facility in Newfoundland, Canada, on Sunday, “out of an abundance of caution,” a spokesperson for the airline said.
The Federal Aviation Administration said it will investigate the incident and the pilot “reported problems with deicing equipment and diverted to Happy Valley-Goose Bay Airport in Canada around 3:15 p.m. local time.”
Happy Valley-Goose Bay, a town on the northeast coast of Canada, has a population of less than 10,000 people and is home to the Canada air force base. It has a long runway that made the emergency landing possible.
One of the passengers, Aditi Shankar, spoke to the outlet and said, “They had to make a landing urgently.” She added that the passengers were stuck in the plane due to the cold temperature outside. Ms Shankar added that several people were not carrying jackets and had not eaten a “real meal” in over 15 hours.
The passengers were left stranded overnight after Delta’s rescue flight, scheduled for Sunday, was unable to take off due to a crew timeout. On social media, a passenger said that after boarding the new aircraft with the other passengers, they discovered that it could not fly. The weather and runway conditions at the airport affected “crew duty times,” according to Delta and the airport had to “suspend operations.”
Shikha Joshi, who was travelling with her four-year-old son, told NBC News that Canadian customs took passengers to the military barracks in groups of 25-30. She wrote on social media, “Boarded a new plane after waiting 7+ hours, waited an hour after boarding for take off only to hear that the crew and pilot have finished their allotted hours of flying and need to rest now for 10-12 hours. Now Delta is looking for accommodations for us all.” Every family received a key to a room with basic facilities, where they slept for around two hours until a bus came to transfer them to a different aircraft, according to Ms Joshi.
On Monday, another rescue flight was sent to Goose Bay. The passengers arrived in Detroit more than 24 hours after the emergency landing. The airline apologised to the customers and stated that it would compensate them, as per NBC News.