Boozy Bust Up Leaves British Tourists Stranded In Bangor Airport And Sleeping On Cots Over US Visa Snag

British tourists traveling back to the United Kingdom after sunning themselves in Cancun, Mexico, were forced to spend the night sleeping on cots in a transit lounge at Bangor Airport in Maine after a fight broke out onboard the plane, prompting an emergency diversion.

“Not how I saw my holiday ending – 17 hours in a holding lounge in Maine due to a fight on the plane,” one disgruntled passenger wrote in a caption to a TikTok video she posted of the rows of cots lined up in the airport.

@crammers13 Not how I saw my holiday ending – 17 hours in a holding lounge in Maine due to a fight on the plane ✌🏼#tui #tuiholidays #maine #bangorinternational @TUI UK & Ireland ♬ Hold My Hand – Jess Glynne

The unfortunate incident unfolded on July 8 when TUI Airways flight BY49 from Cancun to London Gatwick was flying at around 40,000 feet above the US and Canadian border.

According to eyewitnesses onboard the aircraft, a domestic disagreement between a couple turned into a fight, and that, in turn, led the pilots to request to divert to Bangor Airport so that the unruly passengers could be turned over to local law enforcement.

Once on the ground in Bangor, however, it soon transpired that the diversion and subsequent delay had eaten into the legally permitted working hours of the pilots and cabin crew so much that they could no longer fly the passengers back to London the same day.

The aircrew would need to go to a hotel to get a mandated rest period while the passengers would have to wait it out until TUI Airways arranged a rescue flight to bring them home.

It was at this point that the passengers learned that without a US visa or Electronic System for Travel Authorization (ESTA), they wouldn’t be allowed to cross the United States border in order to spend the night in hotels as well.

Most of the passengers didn’t have a visa or ESTA so Bangor Airport officials had to scramble to set up cots in a transit lounge where all the passengers would have to bunk down.

The following morning, TUI Airways arranged for a replacement crew to be dispatched from London on a special flight which operated to Bangor before heading towards Orlando to pick up more British tourists.

In the end, the passengers from flight BY49 didn’t arrive back in London until 1:20 am on July 10.

A spokesperson for the TUI Airways said the airline worked hard to keep the passengers comfortable during their forced stay in Bangor Airport. The airline refused to comment further on the nature of the disruptive passenger incident as it was now in the hands of British legal authorities.

One of the passengers on the flight said the couple who started fighting already appeared intoxicated before they boarded the plane in Cancun, and the cabin crew continued to serve them alcohol after takeoff.

So far, TUI Airways has reportedly offered compensation in the form of £200 future travel vouchers for all the passengers onboard the plane.

This isn’t the first time that a TUI Airways flight from Cancun has been forced to divert to Bangor Airport due to unruly passengers. In January 2023, two British men were held in custody in a US federal prison after assaulting a flight attendant.

The men were also already intoxicated before boarding the plane, but the flight attendants allowed them to board if they promised not to drink any more alcohol.

Once in the air, Joseph James Kirby, 36, and Damien Jake Murphy, 36, demanded more alcohol and then grabbed a bottle of Duty Free gin as they directed racist slurs at an African American passenger sitting nearby.

The two men spent two and a half months in prison while on remand and were ordered to pay $26,589 each in restitution.

Last September, a judge slammed TUI Airways for allowing intoxicated passengers to board their planes.

The criticism came after two drunk sisters disrupted a flight to the Spanish island of Fuerteventura. Thankfully, in this case, the pair’s behavior reached a crescendo before the plane had even taken off, and the sisters were removed after the plane returned to the gate.

Why Couldn’t The Aircrew Just Carry On Working To Get The Passengers Home?

British and European aircrews are regulated by very strict work rules, which include something that is known as “Flight Time Limitations.”

FTLs set out the absolute maximum number of hours that pilots and cabin crew are allowed to work, depending on a number of factors, such as the time they reported for duty, whether their body clocks are acclimated to the local departure time, and whether there are crew rest facilities onboard the aircraft.

In optimal conditions, aircrews can work for 13 hours, although this can be extended to as much as 18 hours with proper crew rest facilities. There is also the ability to extend still further by up to three additional hours in the event of unforeseen circumstances and at the discretion of the Captain.

In the case of TUI Airways flight BY49, the aircrew were unlikely to be acclimated to the local departure time in Mexico, so their FTL was reduced to just 11 hours. There is the possibility of extending the FTL with crew rest facilities, but with a short flight time over the Atlantic, it wouldn’t actually be possible to achieve the amount of rest required to extend the duty limits as much as was required.

Why Do Flights Divert to Bangor Airport?

With its location on the far northeast coast of the United States, Bangor Airport is one of the last remaining diversion airports available for flights heading over the Atlantic Ocean.

Of course, if a situation is developing onboard, you don’t want to be dealing with a potentially serious medical or security issue over a massive ocean with very limited diversion points.

As a result, pilots will often have to make a judgment call as to whether they need to divert or not just before they reach the Atlantic, and that means that Bangor Airport often finds itself hosting diverted flights.