Whip-round of charter flight passengers to pay for fuel! pay

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Wednesday, February 22, 2012

British airline passengers were forced to stage a giant whip-round and hand over £20,000 in cash after being ‘held to ransom’ by their airline. More than 180 were left stranded on their Boeing 757 when cabin crew announced during a refuelling stop that the Austrian carrier Comtel Air had ‘run out of money’. The plane from Amritsar, in India, was on a stopover at Vienna en route to Birmingham. Passengers were told that the flight would continue only if 23,400 euros (£20,005) was handed over. Otherwise they and their luggage would be removed from the aircraft. Police were called in when they refused to get off. A six-hour stand-off ended only when passengers were escorted to cashpoint machines. These eventually ran out of money and many of those on board had no funds anyway. But the sum was eventually raised through a series of promises and IOUs. Passengers said it was feared that another 600 travellers on four planned flights were stranded in India. But details were sketchy last night as few of the companies involved were returning calls. Comtel Air specialised in executive aviation and owned a Dassault Falcon 2000 business jet. It started the commercial route from the UK to Amritsar only last month, using the leased Boeing 757.