A flight grounded hundreds of Hawaii-bound passengers at a New York City airport for nearly 33 hours before finally taking off on Wednesday.
The Hawaiian Airlines flight departing from JFK Airport missed its 10 a.m. takeoff on Tuesday after the crew "reported an odor during a pre-departure cabin check."
The passengers heading to Honolulu sat through one delay, then a second delay -- starting what would eventually stretch into a day-long wait to get on board their plane.
Frustrated passengers claimed the airline would not return their luggage or exchange tickets for other flights. Instead, passengers were stranded at the airport for more than a day, and said they were only given a $12 food voucher.
"Every time they delay it, they don’t give us a real reason for the delay," Joe Rao, Jr., one of the passengers, told News 4. "We learned that there was a malfunction of some kind, a mechanical issue of some kind, that needed to be remedied and they said that the part needed to be flown in from Atlanta, Georgia."
The part was delivered and the fix was made, but the plane still did not have the green light.
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"Then the pilot didn't wanna clear the flight because he said it smelled of fumes," Rao said.
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There were more hours without communication from the airline before the passengers were advised to take the next 10 a.m. flight departing Wednesday morning. The problem? There were already passengers assigned to that flight.
A spokesperson for the airline the long delays were compounded by the maintenance issue and staffing problems. The flight's crew exceeded their duty hours and had to break before the flight could take off.
"The safety of our guests and employees is our highest priority. We deeply apologize for the inconvenience and we're working to get our guests safely to their destination," the statement concluded.
The flight scheduled to depart Tuesday at 10 a.m. eventually left JFK Airport on Wednesday just before 7 p.m.
