- United Airlines passengers will skip celebrating New Year’s Eve due to a time zone quirk.
- Their flight manufactured an unexpected emergency landing, leaving them stranded in American Samoa for 21 hours.
- Some created the most of it by consuming beers with locals, swimming, and discovering the island.
United Airlines travellers will skip celebrating New Year’s Eve after their flight manufactured an crisis landing on a remote Pacific island.
The Guardian to start with documented the information.
The travellers were traveling from Los Angeles to Sydney on Friday when the Boeing 787-9 aircraft was pressured to make an crisis landing at Pago Pago in American Samoa owing to a “mechanical problem”, according to the report.
—AIRLIVE (@airlivenet) December 30, 2022
The tourists will not get to rejoice the clock putting midnight on Saturday as the island is just east of the worldwide date line. A replacement aircraft was due to depart at 3.a.m. on December 31, but the time zone quirk suggests the time would be just immediately after 4am on Sunday, January 1 shortly after their departure.
The flight was due to land in Sydney at 7.15 a.m. on Sunday local time.
Some passengers talked to locals and took a tour of the island, but many others complained about how lengthy it took United to deliver yet another plane, The Guardian documented.
1 newlywed passenger tweeted that she is starting off her honeymoon “stranded” in Pago Pago due to the fact United could not get them a plane “for around 21 hours.”
—Rick Lechtman (@rlechtman) December 31, 2022
Leonie Butta, whose son and two granddaughters were on the flight, informed the newspaper she’d been monitoring the flight online and praised United’s determination to divert to Pago Pago.
A passenger’s father tweeted that his daughter showered at the airport hangar, received an island tour and was “drinking beers on deserted beach.” He also explained: “Daughter on the flight, fairly an adventurous day, they got a tour of the island, pilot purchased them shots, drank beers on the beach front. Ate at Micky D’s, back again at the hangar to chill out on the cots prior to finding on plane at 3am for flight to Sydney.”
United Airways did not quickly answer to a request for comment from Insider.