Passengers on Hawaiian Airlines Flight 51 were prepared for an 11-hour journey from John F. Kennedy International Airport in New York City to Honolulu, Hawaii. However, their flight scheduled to depart on Tuesday didn’t take off until Wednesday, 33 hours later. Was the flight canceled and rescheduled, with the airline booking hotel rooms for the stranded passengers? No, it was delayed for 33 hours.
The initial delay was called after the crew smelled fumes during a pre-departure cabin check. The fumes were caused by an oil leak in the plane’s auxiliary power unit mounted in the tail cone. WNBC reported that the passengers were kept in the dark about the reason for the delay that stretched on for hours. A passenger told the station, “Every time they delay it, they don’t give us a real reason for the delay. 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.”
A Hawaiian Airlines spokesperson told USA Today, “Troubleshooting of the issue continued into yesterday morning, causing our flight crews to exceed their maximum number of legally allowed duty hours and requiring them to return to the hotel for rest.” But the passengers were stuck there. Hawaiian claims that they couldn’t rebook customers because there were no seats available with other carriers. The airline also didn’t have the staffing to get luggage off of the plane.
Instead, the customers were offered $12 meal vouchers and $1,000 in travel credits. Hotel accommodations were severely limited so most passengers had to remain in the terminal if they wanted to stay nearby. The flight eventually departed for Hawaii just after 6:00 p.m. on Wednesday and was scheduled to leave at 10:00 a.m. on Tuesday.