Passengers were fainting and babies were stripped down to just their nappies on a "nightmare" Melbourne-bound Jetstar flight stranded on the tarmac with no air conditioning in tropical conditions.
Jetstar flight JQ18 was scheduled to leave Thailand's Phuket airport at 10:20pm local time but was delayed for more than two hours due to two separate technical faults and a passenger needing to get off due to a medical condition, news.com.au reported.
One of the technical faults affected the ground power unit, which controls the air conditioning unit, so those aboard were forced to endure Thailand's tropical heat and humidity.
A statement from Jetstar provided to news.com.au said the cabin crew "tried to make customers as comfortable as possible" by providing regular cold water while engineers worked on the aircraft.
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Advertise with NZME.However, those aboard had a different story. Angry customers have taken to Jetstar's Facebook page saying the incident was "horrific" and that Jetstar's customer service was "disgusting".
News.com.au spoke to one of the passengers, Laura Beach-Mahoney, who said they were not provided with any updates as several passengers fell ill from the heat.
"Babies were stripped to nappies, the aircraft ran out of water, we had no air for over two hours," she told news.com.au.
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"A young girl had an asthma attack while the air hostess fanned her with the safety manual, then an elderly man fainted - he also was stripped down to his shorts. He needed oxygen from a tank."
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Advertise with NZME.After more than two hours in stifling conditions on the plane, they were finally allowed to disembark and the flight was rescheduled to 4pm today. However, Ms Beach-Mahoney said they then weren't even given accommodation near the airport.
"Once we finally got off, no one told us what was going on for hours. If the passengers didn't all rally together we probably we would have been at the airport all night," she said.
"Then our bus driver, who could barely even drive a coach - we genuinely feared for our safety - got lost and we drove for more than two hours to get to our hotel, which was not anywhere near the airport. It was back in Patong!"
Ms Beach-Mahoney, and the hundreds of other passengers, are now currently back at the airport battling exhaustive queues to check-in again.