In January 2012, the cruise ship Costa Concordia struck an underwater rock off the coast of Tuscany. With the ship sinking, over 4,200 passengers and crew had to evacuate. Incredibly, the ship’s captain, Francesco Schettino, left the sinking vessel via a lifeboat, while there were about 300 people still aboard. In total, 32 people (27 passengers and 5 crew) perished while waiting to be rescued – while the captain had already abandoned ship. He was nicknamed “Captain Coward” and later found guilty of manslaughter and sentenced to 16 years in an Italian prison.
Fast forward to July 21, 2022 and we’ve got another captain who abandoned the vehicle he was in charge of, but this time it was a burning plane.
Vueling is a low-cost carrier that also happens to be the largest airline in Spain. Flight 8751 was waiting to depart Barcelona for Birmingham, England, when passenger Andrew Benion says there was a problem on the plane.
“Suddenly there was this huge bang and smell of burning smoke coming from the back of the plane. All the lights went off and the emergency lights came on – it was terrifying,” said Benion.
“Next thing the stewards start go into melt-down, running up and down aisle – first, telling everyone to keep belts on, then to tell everyone to take their belts off. One ran into the cockpit to tell the captain. Then as soon as a stewardess opened the front door the captain ran straight off. He was just gone. He was first off the plane.
“He did a full Costa Concordia,” Benion explained to The Sun.
He then continued: “You’ve never seen anything like it. If we weren’t all so frightened it would have been complete comedy. His door opened then the side door opened and bang – he was just gone. Then all his crew ran off after him and LEFT us all.
“There was only one stewardess left on the plane and you could see the fear on her face. She started screaming for everyone to get off. The Spanish person next to us translated and said, ‘The plane is on fire’.
“We couldn’t believe the captain just left us like that – he was running off to safety and we were all sat there like lemmings,” said Benion
Benion said passengers had to get off their original plane to wait for another aircraft and captain, and that everyone felt ‘totally panicked’ amid the chaos.
“We were getting off the plane and all the fire engines and ambulances were turning up. They took us into a glass reception area and all the doors were locked – then we were surrounded by police. They were acting as if there was a terrorist attack. We could see them spraying the back of the plane but all the staff refused to talk to us,” he said.
Benion got video of the plane being hosed down.
“They left us in there for an hour, then took us to another plane and left us on there for 90 more minutes while it was refueled. A different captain then turned up on the plane and apologized but refused to go into detail. He just said, ‘We apologize for the inconvenience – we’re going to get you back to Birmingham as soon as possible.’”
The plane was originally scheduled to depart Barcelona at 11:55am but reportedly didn’t leave until until 2.59pm. It arrived in Birmingham almost three hours late.
“We eventually took off but obviously the atmosphere on the plane was shockingly bad – no refreshments of drinks or anything. And of course no-one wanted to be on this plane – we were all terrified.
“It makes you think if that had happened when we were taking off it could have been catastrophic,” Benion continued.
Many news outlets contacted Vueling, who did not reply back. Their own Twitter account never made mention of the event (their last tweet was from June 24th). However a spokesperson did say:
On 21 July 2022, a small external fire was detected on flight VY8754 scheduled to depart from Barcelona to Birmingham at 11.55. The security protocols were initiated immediately and all passengers and crew were quickly disembarked from the aircraft and moved onto an alternative aircraft following a passport control check.
The flight subsequently took off from Barcelona at 15.07. All passengers and crew were unharmed. Our captain remained at the cabin controlling the situation and our First Officer went outside to check the incident with airport managers and different airport people that were helping and following protocols.
Of course, that wasn’t exactly what Banion said, but…
Maybe sometimes the actual, true story will come out.
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