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An American Airlines customer said passengers had to leave after the pilots said they had timed out.
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Sheila Gray said her flight from Charlotte to Boston had already been delayed for five hours.
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She said the airline did not offer any form of compensation.
An American Airlines passenger said she had to get off the plane she had just boarded after a five-hour delay because the pilots had run out of flight time.
Sheila Gray had arrived in Charlotte on Saturday after returning from Rome and trying to get home to Boston.
She told Insider: “All I wanted was to come home to my bed. I had been up for 24 hours at that point and getting out was just the last straw.”
During the layover in Charlotte, her flight was delayed several times because “the plane was being repaired in a hangar,” the gate agent told her.
When the plane was ready, just 20 minutes after boarding, the pilot asked all passengers to get off the plane because “the crew had timed out and couldn’t fly. We all got out and started scrambling to see if we found other flights.”
Gray added: “People were angry and yelling at the gate agents. An irate gentleman in the gate area was later escorted out of the plane after we boarded. I didn’t hear him cause any disturbance on the plane, but had him seen after we were taken off the plane.”
Replacement pilots were found and the original cabin was also able to fly, it turned out.
Gray shared text messages from the airline stating how many times her flight had been rescheduled.
She emphasized that “the gate agents and flight attendants were great” but everyone was mad at the pilot “because he was sure he was about to time out before boarding – he kept letting us board anyway .”
Gray, her husband and two daughters often fly American, but this was not their first bad experience. Last month, the family missed a connecting flight from Philadelphia to Boston when their flight from Paris was delayed.
Summer chaos continues to affect many passengers’ travel plans. Thousands of flights have been canceled and airlines are struggling to meet demand, with baggage piling up in some terminals.
American Airlines did not immediately respond to Insider’s request for comment.
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