Not J* bashing here, but methinks Simon Westaway is, how do I say it?
Lying?!
Jetstar has apologised to 250 passengers forced to wait on board a plane at Bangkok for almost four hours overnight, while engineers changed a hydraulic pump.
Flight number JQF30 is expected to land at Melbourne at 1:00pm AEST. It left Bangkok overnight three hours and 40 minutes after its scheduled departure time, because the pilot realised a hydraulic pump needed changing.
Simon Westaway from Jetstar has apologised to everyone on board.
"Whilst we do apologise to our customers, refreshments were provided, updates were provided," he said.
He says passengers were not allowed to get off the plane for the period because that would have meant a longer delay.
Under the airline's rules, the pilot and the crew must have a mandatory break as soon as they disembark
Simon seems to be telling us here that it was impossible to get the passengers back up into the terminal without getting the crew off as well. Not only that but if the crew merely stepped off the aircraft then that would be a mandatory end to their duty period, forcing a rest break?!!?
Simon, you are telling porkies here.
I don't know what the real situation was, but it shows the state of journalism for a start when this BS is meekly regurgitated.
What it sounds like is that a rolling delay developed, where initially it was thought that the pump wouldn't take that long to replace and it would be better to keep the pax on board.
Fine, these things happen and engineering delays obey their own arcane laws of spacetime anyway; but don't feed us this obvious crap.
