Several "Booed" Late Arrival For JFK Trip

Things got ugly at Miami International Airport Sunday night, when passengers confronted the pilots of an American Airlines flight to New York when they showed up late for the flight.

CBS News reports passengers started booing the flight crew when they arrived over an hour past the scheduled departure time for American Flight 1908.

"When the crew got there, they were late and everyone started to boo them," said passenger Dianne Chandler. "And then they closed them behind glass doors and they kind of threatened us that they weren't gonna fly because of the way people were acting. Some people got very agitated."

The crew said a number of passengers were openly hostile... and they did not feel comfortable putting them on the plane. So they cancelled the flight... a reaction one passenger said was a supreme OVER-reaction.

"I wouldn't think they were hostile," passenger Tim Chandler said, standing up for his fellow passengers. "You know, they booed because they were an hour and fifteen minutes late. When you want to leave at 9:45 -- it's 11 o'clock they show up. So obviously, people are a little upset."

In any case, the crew refused to fly, and passengers were forced to spend a night in one of Miami's finest motels. "They give us a hotel and all that," said one passenger, "but the hotel we stayed at had barbed wire all around it. Nice place, nice hotel, but barbed wire around it."

There's one final postscript for this story... one that, frankly, strikes us as something more than an unfortunate coincidence, or a simple misrouting. When passengers finally arrived at their destination of New York's JFK International late Monday night, they discovered American had sent their luggage to LaGuardia.

FMI: www.aa.com