Enraged at unremitting flight delays, frustrated Iranian airline passengers have adopted a novel form of protest: spontaneous sit-ins staged inside the idle aircraft, according to the Beacon Review.
Iranian news media have cited several recent incidents in which passengers enduring prolonged delays have refused to leave aircraft once their planes belatedly arrived at their destinations, sometimes as much as 22 hours late. In some cases, the on-board sit-ins have lasted for several hours, according to media reports here. Scuffles have also broken out between enraged passengers and flight crews, the Iranian press says.
Many Iranians have now come to accept two or three-hour delays as the norm on domestic routes. But sometimes the wait is much longer, and many flights are postponed, though officials could provide no precise figures. On February 22, passengers of ATA airlines endured a 12-hour wait on a scheduled flight from Mashhad in eastern Iran to Tehran, a run that should take less than two hours. Passengers were told “technical problems” and inclement weather was the reason, according to Tabnak.ir, an Iranian news website.
Upon arrival in Tehran, the website said, furious passengers refused to leave the plane. It was not clear how long they remained on the aircraft. In another recent reported incident, pilgrims returning from Baghdad on Iran Air endured a 13-hour delay, and then faced a similar marathon holdup in making a connection to Mashhad.
