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Passenger forces plane to return to gate because he forgot his bag

‘Yes I want to go now, ask the captain!’ man is heard shouting

Travel Desk
Friday 21 July 2023 11:23 BST
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Furious passenger forces plane to turn back because he forgot his bag

A plane in Thailand was forced to turn back to the gate before take-off after a man demanded to be let off because he’d forgotten his bag.

The unnamed man was filmed arguing with a flight attendant while the Bangkok-bound Thai Smile flight was preparing to depart from Chiang Mai International Airport in northern Thailand.

Cabin crew tried to make the irate man sit down.

“If you still feel like this, we have to move you off the flight, so do you want to go? Or do you want to wait until Bangkok?” one flight attendant asks him, reports Stuff.

“Yes, yes I want to go now, ask the captain!” the man is heard shouting.

Though the Airbus A320 aircraft had been on approach to the runway, it then turned back to the gate to offload the man and his friends.

One frustrated fellow passenger, who did not wish to be named, said: “The flight was about 45 minutes late. The man had two friends with him and they all left the plane.

“He was complaining that his bag with money and important things inside was still at the airport. He wanted to collect it.

“It was very disruptive and they didn’t care they were making other people late.”

It’s not the first time left luggage has prompted a plane to turn around.

Just before Christmas in 2021, a pilot made the decision to do a U-turn 10 minutes into a flight to pick up two bags accidentally left at the airport.

Sounds Air flight 906 was a few minutes into a flight from Westport in New Zealand’s South Island, bound for Wellington, on 22 December when the pilot received the message that two pieces of luggage had been forgotten.

It was just before 5pm when airport staff contacted the flight crew, with no further flights scheduled for the rest of the day.

“So the passenger would have been without their bags until the following morning,” said Sounds Air operations manager Jesse Woods at the time.

“Coming up to Christmas, people need to be with their belongings, so the pilot made the decision to turn back and uplift those bags.”

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