Taiwanese airline founder travels to Japan to apologise to stranded passengers

To personally apologise to airline passengers who were stranded overnight after a flight was delayed and cancelled, the founder of a Taiwanese airline flew to an airport in Japan, in a first of sorts.

Chairman of Starlux Airlines Chang Kuo-Wei travelled all the way to Tokyo’s Narita Airport in Japan earlier this week to apologise to the 308 stranded passengers due to the delay of a scheduled flight, according to a report by Taiwan News.

In a video, the founder claimed that the delay was due to strong winds which did not convince the furious crowd at the airport.

According to Chang, X803 which was supposed to fly on May 6 was originally delayed due to a maintenance check of the aircraft. After the check, the cabin crew had exceeded their working hours.

A passenger shared the update on his Facebook group Complaints Communal where he revealed he was initially scheduled to board his flight JX803 at 3:45 pm but was delayed to 4:20 pm without an explanation.

Irate passengers waiting for their flights got to know that earlier two flights had been delayed due to strong winds at Narita. They thought the delay happened for the same reason and patiently waited for some time.

At about 5:30 pm, a Starlux Airline representative informed the passengers that the company was planning to move passengers from JX801 to JX803 as well. The passenger said that since the beginning, JX803 had not been delayed due to the weather but rather for convenience. “As (the airline) did not want to send another aeroplane to transport passengers on JX801, the time of passengers on JX803 was sacrificed so passengers on JX801 could be flown back together,” he added.

Starlux Airlines didn’t provide either water or food after the passengers boarded the flight at 7 pm and also announced that the original cabin crew had exceeded their maximum working hours which further delayed the flight till 11 pm.

Later, the airline promised a full refund.

The passengers de-boarded the flight and were asked to spend the night at the terminal. While interacting with angry passengers the Starlux founder said that the Narita Airport initially agreed to postpone the start of its curfew until 12:30 am but later went back on its word.

The passengers were expecting an explanation from the founder about the decision taken of merging two flights which went unanswered.

The original flight was supposed to take off at 6 am on May 7 but was again delayed by two hours. The stranded passengers were not given food, water or vouchers in the morning and had to buy their breakfast on their own, which aggravated an already tense situation.

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