Over 200 British Airways Passengers Stranded For 3 Days During 'Chaotic' Journey

Over 200 passengers were left stranded for 90 hours due to multiple flight delays in their “journey from hell” in a British Airways aircraft, reports said Sunday.

Passengers of British Airways (BA) flight 2036 were scheduled to fly from Orlando airport to Gatwick on Thursday evening. Their flight was first delayed by 24 hours due to mechanical issues with the plane, a Boeing 777-200, and the passengers were forced to remain on the ground.

They were then sent to a hotel for the night, but there was nobody from BA to greet them at the hotel. The only thing they received was a printout of an apology letter, the reports said. The passengers later said their departure time kept changing while they were at the hotel, Rosen Shingle Creek, and the hotel and BA failed to keep them updated on all the changes.

The flight finally took off from Orlando on Friday evening, but was diverted to New York because of technical problems mid-air. This led to further delays. A report in Metro said the plane dumped fuel mid-air and lowered its landing gear at a high altitude. The pilot landed at the JFK airport.

“I was quite scared,” 14-year-old Daisy May Dixon, who was in the plane, told Fox News.

The passengers were once again grounded. This time, however, there weren't enough hotel rooms available due to the New York City Marathon scheduled for Sunday.

The passengers were forced to sleep in the airport overnight. Many furious and frustrated passengers took to social media to share images of people lying on the floor at the airport.

One passenger, Jenny Collom, wrote: “Can you please give us some information regarding the BA2036 flight? We’ve been diverted to JFK and are currently sitting in a check-in zone with no staff in sight. People are laying on the floor, and no staff are here to provide any information whatsoever.”

The customers were left less than satisfied with the whole experience. A family who took the flight to celebrate their toddler's birthday at Disneyland expressed their disappointment with BA by sharing their experience.

"BA's customer service was disgusting, absolutely abhorrent," Sarah Wilson, the mother of the toddler from Undy, Monmouthshire, said. ”The passengers were treated inhumanely, all we wanted was some food and drink, somewhere to sleep and to be kept informed -- and they failed on all counts no matter what they claim.”

“Children were having panic attacks, the turbulence was awful and people were scared, tired and hungry. One mother asked where she could get formula for her seven-month-old baby and the reply was 'it would be difficult to find anywhere at this hour'. She was in tears,” Wilson said according to a BBC report, adding "It was the journey from hell when it was supposed to be a holiday of a lifetime that we'd saved up for years to go on."

Reports said British Airways sent a relief aircraft to retrieve the passengers from the airport and get them back to London on Saturday. The problem was called a “minor technical issue” by a British Airways spokesman. He apologized to customers for the delay, and claimed the airlines were trying to get people to London “as quickly as possible.” BA said it "appreciated that this was an exhausting and frustrating experience” for the over 200 passengers and said it was sorry for the “long delay.”