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16th Jun 2024

Plane delayed for an hour due to toddler refusing to put on his seatbelt

Ryan Price

The unnecessary disruption left passengers infuriated.

A crowded flight was delayed for over an hour after a child on board refused to wear his seatbelt.

Latam flight 4049 from Santa Marta to Bogota, Colombia was left waiting on the tarmac with a cabin full of impatient passengers because the boy wouldn’t obey the rules and strap himself into his seat.

According to El Colombiano, the stubborn child not only disobeyed his father, but the flight attendants also.

The pilot was left with no choice but to return the aircraft to the gate where the toddler was eventually taken off the plane along with his father.

Videos taken from other passengers onboard were uploaded to social media, and in some, people can be heard yelling at flight attendants to remove the boy, with others exlaiming ‘do something!’.

A flight attendant can be heard over the tannoy saying: “Dear passengers, we inform you that if the flight regulations are not complied with, we cannot start the flight. They were not complied with, we had to return.

“And now we are waiting for the passengers who did not comply with the regulations to please disembark. We cannot start the flight this way due to safety.”

In one of the clips, a runway employee in a hi-vis vest can be seen boarding the plane back at the gate and escorting the father and son off of the flight.

The incident is one of two bizarre occurrences to happen on a flight recently.

Last Monday, passengers on a British Airways flight endured a nine hour ‘journey to nowhere’ after they took off and landed in London.

The Boeing 787-9 Dreamliner had set off from London Heathrow at 9:27am on Monday (June 10) on its way to Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston, according to flight records.

But it ended up landing back at Heathrow almost nine and a half hours later at 6:54am the following day (June 11).

The plane had just crossed the Canadian border when it was forced to perform a u-turn and return to London because of a “minor technical issue,” British Airways said.

The exact cause of the issue has not been specified by the airline, but it has been reported that it was to do with the aircraft’s engines.

The Independent reported that flights to Houston only take 30-40 minutes longer than the nine hours and 27 minutes that the plane took to travel from London to London.

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