Originally Posted by
essxjay
From the OP's link:
For four hours, they sat on the plane, sweating, frustrated and tired. During the ordeal, pilots exceeded their maximum flight time and the plane had to stay grounded so after all that, the passengers still couldn't reach their Newark destination.
Touché on the time count.
Now what about the cause of the outbound delay?
I thought I read they were trying to fix the air conditioning; apparently without success. It's not (I believe) a safety MEL item and
maybe they thought they had fixed it, but I wouldn't rule out that Virgin decided to dispatch it
anyway. In which case, I can see a 'due diligence' lawsuit in the offing - there must have been at least 1 lawyer on board
.
I don't know who flew the empty VIR1P out next morning. If it was a complete replacement crew then they could have taken the passengers, so I'm
assuming it was the same crew. A positioning flight doesn't have the same legal hours requirement perhaps; I don't know but maybe someone else does ?