Nearly three hundred passengers from Mexico were stranded overnight aboard two Delta planes that landed in Montgomery, Alabama. Initially bound for Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta, Georgia, they were diverted and people were unable to disembark because the chosen emergency stopover does not have U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) facilities.
The two flights, 1828 that took off from Cabo San Lucas, and 599 that departed from Mexico City, were diverted to Alabama because of bad weather. They were forced to make an emergency landing at 9:30 p.m. at the first available airport. However, Montgomery Regional Airport has no CBP facilities to conduct document checks because it serves mostly domestic flights. So travelers were forced to stay inside the two planes for 15 hours, until 5:30 a.m. the next morning, waiting for the go-ahead to depart from Atlanta.
A Delta spokesperson issued a statement to People: “We sincerely apologize to our customers for this experience. We fell short of how we aspire to serve and care for our customers amid thunderstorms in the Southeast U.S. Thursday evening.” We are reaching out to each customer with a full refund of their booking,” adding that the company will work to resolve these kinds of delays due to bad weather.
