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Journalism of Courage
An airline asked passengers to voluntarily get off a plane after the aircraft became too heavy to fly. The passengers who decided to deboard were compensated with €500 (approximately Rs 45,000) and, subsequently, took another free-of-charge flight the next day.
The incident took place on July 5 when an easyJet flight was scheduled to take off from the Lanzarote Airport to Liverpool John Lennon Airport in England. A video in which the pilot is heard urging passengers to deboard voluntarily is going viral on social media.
The pilot is heard addressing the passengers, “Because there are so many of you, it’s a pretty heavy aircraft we’ve got today. That heavy aircraft combined with a fairly short runway here in Lanzarote and some winds, which aren’t completely favourable at the moment, means that the current environmental conditions here in Lanzarote, the aircraft is too heavy at the moment to depart”.
“Of course, the one way to solve a problem with a heavy aircraft is to make it slightly lighter. If possible, I’d like to ask for up to potentially 20 volunteers to choose not to fly to Liverpool tonight,” added the pilot. On Monday, Sky News shared this video on Twitter.
Commenting on it, a Twitter user wrote, “Oh dude! I’d be the 1st one-off that plane! No way I’d fly and take a chance after the announcement. Yep, get me on another plane lol”. Another person wrote, “If a pilot is concerned about the plane being to heavy my 220-pound plus self will gladly get off the plane . I would rather be late for a meeting than be dead for one.”
As per Simple Flying, a portal dedicated to aviation news, as a norm when airlines need to shed weight, they usually unload cargo or luggage instead of asking passengers to disembark. This makes easyJet’s decision to deboard people unusual.
