Passengers stranded as American Airlines flight is forced to divert 600 miles over fuel leak

Passengers have complained about being stranded for 24 hours after American Airlines diverted a flight 600 miles over a fuel leak on Labor Day weekend. 

Hundreds of travelers were caught up in the chaos after the Boeing 777 plane from Texas to Paris re-routed to Tennessee due to a mechanical issue on August 31. 

Flight tracking services show the plane set off from Dallas Fort Worth International Airport at 1.15am local time, and was airborne for just over an hour. 

Crew members reported a mechanical issue which one passenger confirmed to the Daily Mail was a fuel leak. The plane was diverted to Nashville International Airport. 

Passengers said they were then de-planed and loaded onto a recovery flight to their final destination, Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport in France, an entire day later. 

Incensed traveler Carlota Montoya told the Daily Mail she was one of hundreds of passengers held at Nashville for what was supposed to be the start of the holiday.

'The plane got a mechanical failure with the fuel leak so we had an emergency landing in Nashville,' she said. 

'It was terrible. I had a business meeting lost, but lots of people lost their vacation, trains, and plans.'

'They did give us a hotel and a $12 voucher for a meal, but no further explanation or compensation,' she added. 'We all lost a day in Paris.'

Montoya also took to X to express her frustration with the 'nightmare' journey, describing it as a 'travel fail'.

'American Airlines, what a nightmare,' she wrote. 'Emergency stop in Nashville on my way to Paris and now 24+ hrs delayed. Zero support, zero communication. 

'Travel should mean trust, not frustration.'

American Airlines responded by apologizing and explaining that diversions are made 'with only safety in mind'. 

It's unclear whether passengers were held on the plane or at Nashville airport during the diversion. The Daily Mail has reached out to the airline for further information.

The flight wasn't the only travel headache for Labor Day vacationers. 

It comes after an air traffic control radio outage grounded all inbound flights to Newark Liberty Airport in New Jersey on Thursday, just before the holiday weekend began. 

Incoming flights from across the US and Canada were dramatically slowed down, with average delays of as long as 2.5 hours and some nearly four hours. 

Departing flights did not appear to be impacted.

The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) said the outage was due to an equipment issue, causing air traffic controller to lose their radio frequencies.

The alert affected flights arriving between August 28 at 12.22pm ET and August 29 at 11.59pm.

Travelers shared their frustrations on social media, with some saying their flight has been delayed three times within 15 minutes.

'Traveling this weekend? It's going to be busy,' wrote the Newark Airport in a post on X, recommending that travelers budget extra time to arrive, park, check in and get through security. The airport has not acknowledged the current outage.

This was the second outage in the past 24 hours affecting controllers at the Philadelphia ATC center, which manages Newark airspace. 

The previous occurred on Wednesday between 6:30pm and 7:30pm, when audio briefly failed, making communication between planes and controllers unclear.

Controllers at Newark were warned that frequency issues could occur at any time over the next 24 hours, an on-duty controller told ABC News. 

To manage the situation, the FAA started limiting flights into Newark to 28 per hour through at least Friday, down from the usual 34. 

Arriving planes are also being spaced about 20 miles apart as they approach the airport. 

The FAA last year relocated control of the Newark airspace area to Philadelphia to address staffing and congested New York City area traffic.

The airport has experienced several outages this year, with two in May.

On May 19, a brief two-second outage occurred at the Philadelphia TRACON radar approach control facility around 11:35am.

The FAA reported no flight disruptions, but the incident was under investigation as part of ongoing equipment reliability concerns. 

This was the fourth reported outage in a month, the others hit May 11, May 9 and April 28, which saw over 1,000 flights canceled and significant delays after radar and communications went dark for around 90 seconds.

Following air traffic control issues this spring, the FAA cut the number of flights arriving and departing from the airport throughout the summer. 

Read more

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