- American Airline passengers were held on a plane with limited air-con for six hours, a report says.
- Genna Contino, a reporter for The Charlotte Observer, said passengers were sobbing on the plane.
- She tweeted that there was also no food or drink service on the plane.
American Airlines passengers were held on a hot plane with no food or drink service for six hours on Sunday afternoon, according to a reporter for The Charlotte Observer.
The flight from Charlotte NC, to New York City JFK, was supposed to depart in the early afternoon but due to issues with the fuel tank passengers were transferred to another plane and held on the runaway, per The Charlotte Observer.
Genna Contino, a reporter for the news outlet who was on the flight, said the first plane had "limited" air conditioning for the first three hours while the second plane had no air conditioning or food or drink service.
She said in a tweet that by the sixth hour of being held on the plane someone on the flight was having a "mental breakdown." She added that the passengers on the plane weren't allowed to exit despite their distress.
Contino said the air conditioning was turned off the save fuel "until people started sobbing and having panic attacks."
Representatives for American Airlines did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment.
An American Airlines spokesman, Andrew Trull, told The Charlotte Observer that the six-hour delay was due to maintenance issues and a weather delay.
Tull told the local news outlet that the flight to JFK originally boarded at 1:40 p.m., but passengers were later told to leave the plane at 3:50 p.m. They were then boarded onto another aircraft at 4:30 p.m., which eventually left for JFK at 7:30 p.m.
"While certainly an unfortunate delay, it is something we apologize to our customers for with the combination of maintenance and weather," Trull said.