According to the Daily Mail, a British budget airline Easyjet had to ask 19 passengers to leave a plane because it was “too heavy” to fly. The passengers were on their way back to Britain from Lanzarote, Spain, on Wednesday, but the flight was delayed by bad weather and excess weight – it took off almost two hours later than its planned time of 9.45 pm.
A video that has gone viral online shows the pilot of the flight explaining the delay to the passengers. “Thank you all for being here today. Because there are so many of you it’s a pretty heavy aircraft,” the pilot said. “That heavy aircraft along with a pretty short runway and with the current unfavorable conditions here in Lanzarote, means the aircraft is too heavy to fly. I’ve been sitting with my senior first officer and we have a lot of experience with this and have done this before.
“With safety as our main priority, there is no way, with the current wind conditions, that we could get this aircraft in the air. There are several factors - it’s very hot, the wind isn’t great, the direction isn’t ideal,” the pilot went on.
“Now, you might be wondering what happens next and that’s what I’ve come in here to tell you. I have talked to our operations team and the one way to fix a problem with a heavy aircraft is to make it a bit lighter.