Air India detains passengers at Gatwick for 9 hours
I read a news report that an Air India flight to London Heathrow had to land at London Gatwick because of fog. For various reasons the flight could not depart for Heathrow for nine hours during which time the passengers were kept on board and forbidden to leave. My question is why? Is there any law that says you can't leave a flight until it has reached its declared destination? Flights are diverted all the time due to bad weather and the usual procedure is for passengers to be taken to their final destination by coach with the luggage following later. It is not as though the flight had landed in another country. It had landed at one London airport instead of another. Many passengers said Gatwick was as good as Heathrow as far as they were concerned. Air India obviously knew that the flight had ended because the pilots hours were declared spent and part of the delay was waiting for a relief crew. Unless it is a flight where a relief crew is already on board, for very obvious reasons you can't stop pilots flying in excess of their hours during a continuing flight so the flight was over as far as the airline was concerned. This sounds like a case of false imprisonment to me. The airline can't have it both ways - either the flight was over or it wasn't. The Police were called to deal with the passengers complaints and to prevent a breach of the peace - not to release them from being falsely imprisoned against their will. The Police were also reported to have stated that the passengers were in need of refreshment. It doesn't look good for the airline's competence or care. Any comments?