Saturday, December 21, 2013

Travel gets delays - but this is ridiculous

I have many stories about several different reasons for flight delays that I or others I know about have suffered:


  • When your airline declares bankruptcy 
  • Country shut down by a volcano (to be posted) 
  • 6 Hours on the tarmac (to be posted) 
  • Blizzards
  • Thunder Storms
  • Sand Storms
  • No equipment (plane late getting in to take you)
  • Plane is broken
  • Woman bumped head, and needed to be taken for medical treatment (had to wait for her bags to be removed)
But this is the strangest story I have heard:



Seems that the pilot for a flight to New York from Allama Iqbal International Airport, in Lahore, Pakistan refused to take off until his food order from a local hotel could be delivered. 

As reported in The Nation:

The catering department served approved menu, including lunch, peanuts, chips and biscuits. But Flight Captain Noushad asked the catering department to serve him sandwiches. The catering staff expressed their inability to serve anything beyond the approved menu and also informed him of the sensitivity of the flight’s departure time. The staff told him that sandwiches could only be arranged by placing an order to a five-star hotel in the city, which would take more than two hours. The captain remained adamant about his demand and said no matter how much time it would take and that he needed sandwiches at any cost.
The catering department contacted the PIA head office in Karachi and brought the matter into their notice. The management directed the catering department to meet his demand. Sandwiches were arranged from the hotel concerned and the flight could depart at 9:15am with the delay of two and a half hours.
So most of his passengers not only had to wait for 2.5 hours, many missed their connecting flights in Manchester or New York so he could get his sandwiches.