Yesterday, passengers on a flight from Salt Lake City to Puerto Vallarta, Mexico got a rude surprise. Roughly an hour before the plane was due to arrive at the Pacific resort, it had to go all the way back to Salt Lake City because of what was described as a “paperwork issue” that would have kept the plane from landing.
Delta Connection flight 4507, operated by SkyWest Airlines, was about an hour away from Puerto Vallarta when the pilot dropped a bombshell–they were going to have to turn around and stop in Tucson to refuel before going back to Salt Lake City. KSL-TV in Salt Lake City obtained raw video taken by one of the passengers on a cell phone camera as the announcement was made. Watch here.
The pilot said that there was a situation where “we wouldn’t have known what to do” if the plane couldn’t land, and there was no remedy short of turning back. Delta gave all 57 passengers vouchers for a hotel, food, and other expenses. It also rebooked them for a flight to Puerto Vallarta that left this morning.
Neither SkyWest nor Delta went into specifics about why the plane had to turn around. However, KSL-TV’s Alex Cabrero has an idea. One of the passengers, Casey Boyd, told Cabrero that before the plane initially left Salt Lake City, a Delta gate agent told passengers that the plane being used for the flight was smaller than originally planned. The agent asked if anyone wanted to take a later flight. It’s not known if anyone took the offer. However, Cabrero suggested that the replacement plane may not have had the required paperwork that would have legally allowed it to land in Mexico–and by the time anyone at SkyWest and/or Delta caught it, the plane was already in the air.
Maybe it’s just me, but I’m finding it hard to give Delta and SkyWest the benefit of the doubt. After all, we’re talking about one of the biggest commuter airlines in the nation, working in partnership with the world’s biggest airline. Snafus like this don’t exactly inspire confidence in our air travel system. Someone at Delta and/or SkyWest owes a better explanation for what happened–and soon.
