British Airways Passengers Trapped On Plane For 7 Hours Before Firefighters Rescued Them From ‘Toxic’ Air

Passengers aboard a severely delayed British Airways flight from London Heathrow Airport to Krakow, Poland, on Sunday have slammed the airline after firefighters were forced to come to their rescue as they evacuated everyone onto the tarmac after the air onboard the plane “turned toxic.”

Alan Adkin described the “terrible” and “inhuman” experience he was forced to endure at the hands of British Airways on July 6 after passengers were forced to sit on the plane for seven hours before the airport fire service ordered them off the plane.

According to Alan, who recounted his experience on a Facebook page dedicated to complaints about British Airways, the delay was due to a technical fault with the cabin air conditioning system that kept blowing a fuse.

Rather than keeping passengers in the terminal or letting them deplane, British Airways chose to keep everyone onboard for hours on end as engineers tried but repeatedly failed to fix the fault.

“In those seven hours, all they gave us was two small bottles of water and a breakfast bar,” Alan said on British Airways flight BA872, which was meant to depart at around 9 am on Sunday.

“The firemen finally evacuated us, saying the air had turned toxic,” Alan continued. “Terrible behavior and inhuman, no compassion.”

The flight was being operated by a 20-year-old Airbus A319 aircraft, which was involved in a serious ‘fume event’ in September 2024 when the pilots had to put on emergency oxygen masks due to the smell of fumes in the cabin.

The plane was flying from London to Aberdeen but diverted to Manchester, where emergency services were waiting to meet the aircraft on arrival.

Following Sunday’s incident, the flight was eventually canceled, but the plane was quickly put back into service on Monday morning.

British Airways was contacted for comment, but the airline did not respond.

In 2019, British Airways faced a spate of contaminated air events on its airplanes, especially its fleet of Airbus A320 series single-aisle airplanes, which seem particularly susceptible to this type of incident.

At one point, British Airways suffered as many as 56 ‘fume’ or ‘odor’ events in less than a month, with 14 incidents occurring in less than 24 hours.

Contaminated air events can be caused by a variety of reasons, although many incidents can be attributed to the ‘bleed air’ system that aircraft manufacturers use to supply air to the cockpit and passenger cabin.

In its simplest form, a bleed air system uses some of the air being sucked into the engine and ‘bleeds’ it into the cabin air conditioning system.

The problem with this system is that various contaminants like engine oil and lubricants can vaporize and enter the air being pumped into the cabin.

In May, a United Airlines flight attendant who claims she has suffered life-changing injuries from a contaminated air event on an Airbus A319 sued the European aerospace giant, claiming that Airbus planes have a flawed design.

Darlene Fricchione says her life has been turned upside down after breathing in “poisonous and toxic contaminated air” shortly after landing at Denver International Airport on April 11, 2023.

To this day, Darlene says she still suffers from severe headaches, which have gotten worse over time, and until only recently, she experienced persistent nose bleeds.

Many passengers and crew may only suffer very minor, short-lived side effects from breathing in contaminated cabin air, but Darlene’s lawsuit contends that many others have reported “permanent and serious injury.”