An American Airlines flight from San Juan, Puerto Rico to Miami, Florida was diverted to the Bahamas early last week, stranding passengers at a local airport overnight without any accommodation, forcing passengers to sleep on the floor.
It also temporarily turned the passengers into illegal immigrants on the island nation. “They pointed out that, like, you’re all illegal immigrants here now, you all don’t have much of a say in anything. Even though we didn’t choose to be there,” Dimas Henriquez, a passenger on American Airlines Flight 2421, told Fox News Digital.
“We were literally locked in. It was impossible to get out,” he continued. “I was awake the whole time, but people were on the floor covered in corners and things, like very widespread. It felt like we were camping inside.”
Henriquez said there were about 90 passengers on the Aug. 3 flight that was diverted due to weather. The traveler revealed that American Airlines staff told travelers another crew from Miami was on their way to fly them out because the original flight crew was “full on time.”
“The whole point of what happened to us was that we were there for 14 hours. But what happened during the 14 hours was the really painful part, where we only talked to two people the whole time until maybe like the last hour, where everyone was up and going to work and showing up at the airport,” Henriquez said. for Fox News Digital.
When they returned to fly to Miami the next day, Henriquez claims an agent told him he was booked on a connecting flight to Raleigh to replace his original itinerary, but upon arrival in Miami he went to pick up the card. of boarding and was told “that the plane is full, you have never been on it.” Henriquez was told there was no other replacement flight for two days.
When asked about the possibility of a token to cover the waiting period for his connecting flight, Henriquez claims he was denied a voucher. The passenger and his friends self-financed a rental car to drive home to North Carolina from Miami.
“Giving someone a refund for missing part of their trip is not enough when you put them through a lot of excruciating circumstances like this. I feel like [it warranted] the courtesy of reaching out and at least helping me find an alternate route home,” Henriquez continued. “They only refunded me $120, but that doesn’t even cover what I had to do to get home to fix my problem that was caused by this.”
Henriquez, a native of Colombia who has lived in the U.S. since he was a 3-year-old child, says he was “a little stressed” while in the Bahamas.
“I am a green card holder. I’m not even supposed to be there. And I don’t want anything showing up on my citizenship application or something that says, Hey, were you somewhere you shouldn’t have been? I have been very vocal about [how] I didn’t want to be there, he said.
“I knew I couldn’t be there and it was never my intention to be there. I wouldn’t have been there by myself, I wouldn’t have left the place of my own accord,” the traveler told Fox News Digital.
The North Carolina renter went to Puerto Rico with a group of friends to avoid the logistics of passports or currency exchange, a sentiment Henriquez said other passengers shared.
The passenger posted a video about the garbage stuck at the airport by American Airlines on TikTok, one on his personal account and another on a friend’s profile. The video garnered millions of views, with users flocking to the comments to punch their keyboards in disbelief at the situation facing the flight’s 2,421 passengers.
One user wrote, “Talk to a lawyer ASAP,” while another commented, “American Airlines always does this,” and another profile wrote, “forget a refund, I want legal compensation!”
American Airlines has not yet responded to Fox News Digital’s request for comment.
Alba Cuebas-Fantauzzi is a freelance production assistant at Fox News Digital.
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