Two Delta Air Lines flights from Mexico heading to Boston on Thursday were forced to divert to Alabama, where they were stuck on the tarmac for hours due to a customs issue.
Flight DL 1828 from Los Cabos International Airport departed at 5:17 p.m., while flight DL 599 from Mexico City took off nearly an hour later.
The two flights were scheduled to stop in Atlanta — Delta’s hub and headquarters — before continuing on to Boston. But they were forced to divert to Montgomery, Alabama, due to bad weather, according to Boston 25.
Both flights landed at the airport in Montgomery around 10:30 p.m. local time, a Delta spokesperson told the network.
Since they were coming from an international point of origin, passengers were forced to sit on the tarmac for hours, unable to leave the plane due to a lack of Customs and Border Protection staff at the airport.
At around 5am, after seven hours on the tarmac in Montgomery with only cookies and water, passengers were permitted to disembark in groups of 20.
Passenger Lauren Forbes told Boston 25: “They had roped off a square area and both flights were in there. If you needed to use a restroom, there was a police officer in front of the restroom.”
They waited for another eight hours before taking off for Atlanta.
Forbes and her boyfriend then had to rebook a connecting flight to Boston on their own.
“Look at the bags under my eyes from not sleeping,” she said on arrival at Logan Airport after a 25-hour journey. “I just want to sleep and go home to my dog. Then, I go to work in the morning.”
Forbes said Delta has already reached out to her about reimbursement, but she added: “I think this is just an eye opener for maybe more substantial protocols in place.”
Delta said the plane doors remained open while passengers waited and explained that the lightning in the area forced them to hold the flights in Montgomery longer than expected, as flight crews had exceeded permitted working hours.
“We sincerely apologize to our customers for this experience,” a Delta Air Lines spokesperson said in a statement. “We fell short of how we aspire to serve and care for our customers amid thunderstorms in the Southeast U.S. Thursday evening. We are reaching out to each customer with a full refund of their booking.”
The airline confirmed that at 5:15 a.m. and 5:23 a.m., some passengers were allowed to disembark and go into the airport, but had to stay in a certain area.
Alabama’s Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport, which would have had appropriate customer staffing, was not suitable as a diversion airport because it was also experiencing severe thunderstorms.
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