A group of high school students who refused to wear masks, led to American Airlines cancelling a flight to the Bahamas from North Carolina’s Charlotte Douglas International Airport on Monday.
The American Airlines Flight 893 to Nassau, Bahamas, was scheduled to fly when students from a Boston-area high school refused to wear masks even though the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDP) still requires masks on planes because of the Covid-19 pandemic, reported Channel 9.
Malik Banks, a passenger seated next to the group of more than 30 students, said: “It was bad. First, they were yelling. They were cursing. They were being very obnoxious.”
“It wasn’t all of them. I would say 75 per cent to 80 per cent of them were being terrible kids, saying smart stuff,” Mr Banks said.
The passengers were already hassled as they had switched planes because of a mechanical issue.
Christina Randolph, another passenger on that plane, said all that students had to do “was follow the rules, put the mask on, sit there.”
“No smart-mouth comments. And they couldn’t do it,” she said.
Ms Randolph rued that the flight cancellation meant a smaller vacation. “Well, I’m a nurse, and it’s really, really hard to get time off work. So when you finally get time off, you really want to be somewhere you want to be,” she told the channel.
Though no one was arrested, the airlines acknowledged that the flight from the Charlotte Douglas airport was delayed till Tuesday.
Another passenger Stephanie Krzywanski said: “Some people’s vacations are ruined. They were only going for a couple of nights. Now, they have to get rebooked. Everyone has to follow the rules. Nobody likes it. Nobody wants to sit around and do this, but you’ve got to follow the rules.”
Some of the passengers were provided with hotel vouchers but as the students were too young to get the hotel rooms, they ended up spending the night at the airport itself.
