Folks Were Trapped On A Jetstar Plane For 7 Hours After It Made An Emergency Landing In The NT

Photo of passengers on Jetstar flight which was grounded for 7 hours at Alice Springs Airport

In today’s edition of Jetstar being Jetstar, passengers on a flight from Bangkok to Melbourne spent about seven hours stranded on the tarmac after the plane made an emergency landing at Alice Springs Airport.

Nice. Cool. Great.

Per the Sydney Morning Herald, Jetstar flight JQ30 was forced to land at about 7.20am Australian Central Standard Time on Sunday due to a passenger suffering a medical emergency about seven hours into the flight.

An electrical fault was detected on the plane while it was on the tarmac and a replacement flight had to choof over to Alice Springs to collect the 320 folks onboard.

The poor passengers weren’t allowed to leave the plane, however, because Alice Springs Airport doesn’t have customs processing facilities.

“As a domestic airport, Alice Springs does not have customs processing facilities and we’ve been working with Border Agencies, the NT Police and the local Airport Authority on the best way to support customers until that replacement aircraft arrives,” a Jetstar spokesperson said on Sunday.

How long were they stuck inside the plane, you ask? Why just seven or so hours. Two shakes of a lamb’s tail, really.

As we know, the plane touched down at Alice Springs at about 7.20am. As reported by the ABC, it wasn’t until about 2.15pm that folks were told they could skedaddle “into a specially partitioned section of the airport”.

Factoring in the time it would’ve taken for people to gather their things and disembark, we can assume that passengers — excluding flight time — would’ve been staring at those same goddamn walls for more than seven hours. If we want to bring the hours the plane had already sunk mid-air into the occasion, we’re looking at the 14-hour mark.

Yes, this entire scenario is my worst nightmare. Why do you ask?

As if shit couldn’t hit the fan any harder, passengers said the plane’s air-conditioning was on the blink and the inflight entertainment was switched off. Being on a plane is less than ideal when those facilities are in tip-top shape, so I can’t imagine how dogshit the mood would’ve been without them.

According to passenger Paul Tarrant, things were “getting a little bit crazy”, which sounds like a polite way of saying “we were ready to riot and storm the snack trolley”.

“I must say, the staff have been friendly and tried to make the best of the situation, but there’s sick people on board, we’ve been here for a hell of a long time and it’s not getting any better,” he told the ABC.

“It’s getting pretty bloody hot inside, as well.”

Another passenger, William Kiss, told 9News people were “very unhappy”. Again, these people are being too civil — let it all out, fellas!

“Even if it was just a walk on the tarmac, people just want to get some fresh air,” he said.

“We’ve been sitting on this plane with the flight time included for 14 hours.”

If my calculations are correct, you could watch all three Pitch Perfect movies in that timeframe and still have, like, nine hours remaining. There are only so many silly comedies the people can consume before they become restless, Jetstar!

The airline told 9News it was heaps soz and will also work with passengers who want their money back on a case-by-case basis, whatever that means.

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