Boeing 787 Full of Passengers Held Up Until Passengers Came Up With $360 to Pay for Repairs

In 2011 passengers on a flight from India to Manchester, U.K. had to pony up cash for fuel when the flight diverted.

The next year an Air France flight bound for Beirut diverted to Damascas and passengers were forced to come up with cash for additional fuel. The pilot couldn’t use a company credit card because of financial sanctions imposed on Syria.

So as insane as it sounds it’s not without precedent that passengers on a Star Alliance member LOT Polish Boeing 787 flight were asked to reach into their pockets to cover repair costs to the plane’s hydraulic pump before a Beijing to Warsaw journey could begin last Monday.

According to the airline’s website they accept the following forms of payment:

In this case though it was cash only. Four passengers coughed up US$360 (some reports say $576) so that the plane, which had been delayed 10 hours, could depart. The loan to the airline was returned to the passengers on arrival in Warsaw. They were also given free tickets (“interest”).


LOT Business Class, credit: LOT Polish

The airline says, yeah, they’ve got no good explanation for how this happened — offering only that their station manager in Beijing “should have cash and credit card with him” for just this kind of thing. On the other hand, why wasn’t the airline’s credit acceptable? What maintenance firms deal only in cash, unless the airline has failed to pay its bills (for which we have no evidence here at this point)?

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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  1. Sounds like the ransomware I dred getting on my pc… just a fraction of a bitcoin to get me back in business.

  2. There was no India to Manchester flight .
    Had you read the article you linked to, you would have known it was a lo—cost charter flight to Birmingham UK.

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