An Air India plane bound for San Francisco made an emergency landing in Siberia on Tuesday.
Hundreds of passengers had to spend the night at a local school.
A man whose mother was on the plane said they were left with no information and little food.
Air India passengers were stranded for two days in a remote Siberian town after an emergency landing. Abandoned by the crew, they had to sleep on the floor and were given only bread and rice. Business Insider learned this from the relative of a fellow traveler.
216 passengers and 16 crew landed in Magadan, Russia on Tuesday after the Boeing 777 had an engine problem and was forced to make an emergency landing. Air India said so on twitter. The plane was en route from New Delhi to San Francisco.
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The crew did not take care of the passengers on site
Satwinder Singh is a man whose mother on board the plane was. He reported that passengers had to wait hours on the plane before they were allowed to disembark. Eventually they brought employees into a building that looked like a school.
They spent the night there but were only given a small mattress and a blanket to sleep on, he said. “Once they were in the building, no crew member took care of them. Nobody gave any information to the passengers. There was also no adequate provision of food and drink,” he added.
According to Singh, the crew members were nowhere to be found after the emergency landing and the passengers were not given tea and bread until around 6 a.m. local time and rice and bread around 1.30 p.m. Singh tried several times to contact Air India to help his mother, who received no information locally.
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Indian water has not yet responded to a request for comment. However, a Twitter video appears to confirm some of Singh’s claims. It shows people seemingly sleeping on rows of mattresses on a basketball court. However, Business Insider has not been able to independently verify the footage.
Air India wants to refund the fare in full
Another Air India plane picked up the passengers and landed in San Francisco early on Thursday morning. The airline wrote on Twitter. In addition, Air India apologized in a letter to the passengers for the incident and announced that it would provide full airfare refunds to customers. In addition, the airline wanted the passengers Travel Vouchers provide.
“Even though the facilities in Magadan, a small town, may not have been up to the standard we normally aspire to, we appreciate your tolerance and understanding that our local representatives and staff have done their best under the circumstances,” it says in the letter. “Although we cannot change what happened, I hope that with this gesture we can express our sincere regret for the disruption and inconvenience,” the letter said.
This article was translated from English by Stefanie Michallek. You can find the original here.