He made an appearance at Japan’s Narita International Airport on May 7
An airline founder is making international headlines after visiting the airport in person to apologize to passengers stuck there overnight. According to taiwan newsChang Kuo-wei, chairman of Starlux Airlines, appeared at Japan’s Narita International Airport on Sunday, May 7, to apologize to 308 affected passengers for the delay.
He was seen in a video explaining that a flight was delayed due to ‘really strong winds’. Mr Kuo-wei also said the airlines would give full refunds to the passengers.
Mr Kuo-wei told passengers that the second flight was delayed due to a maintenance check on the plane, before the flight crew exceeded their working hours.
Notably, a series of delays led passengers on two flights to spend the night at Narita International Airport on Saturday, May 6. Passengers of a flight originally scheduled to board JX803 at 3:45 p.m. were delayed until 4:20 p.m. pm without any explanation. Starlux transferred passengers to another flight at approximately 5:30 a.m. A staff member informed passengers that the two flights were being merged.
They boarded the plane at around 7 p.m., only for departure to be pushed back to 11 p.m. because then another flight crew had to be found. Meanwhile, the passengers were kept on board the aircraft till around midnight, following which the flight was cancelled.
Passengers were told they would have to spend the night at the terminal, and were not allowed to board the plane until sleeping bags arrived. At 1 am, the passengers were finally taken off the plane. According to reports, he was then forced to sleep at the airport and was given food at around 9.30 pm.
The airline then announced that the plane would take off on Sunday (May 7) at 6am, but then again changed the departure time to 8am.
Then Kuo-Wei came to the airport to apologize to the angry passengers, but many were not convinced.
The plane finally took off after about 16 hours of takeoff. Passengers were not given food, water or vouchers in the morning and had to buy their own breakfast.