AIR NIGHTMARE: Chaos as Newark Flight Diverted

BRYNN GINGRAS, LEANNE GENDREAU and JENNIFER MILLMAN NBC New York 06/23/2010 15:40

Three hundred travelers started the summer with an airplane nightmare they will not soon forget. Hundreds of Newark-bound passengers sat for four hours on a tarmac in a stifling cabin after bad weather diverted their flight from London in Connecticut and union regulations grounded it there.

To make matters worse, passengers said, the plane's generators shut down for the second time, leaving them with no air conditioning and sweltering temperatures that reached 100 degrees.

Some people on the inauspicious Virgin Atlantic flight fainted from the heat, said Andrew Porwancher, of Princeton, N.J. One passenger was taken to a hospital, but airline officials said there is no evidence to link this with the flight.

"It was like four hours on the ground without any air conditioning. It was crazy. Just crazy,'' passenger Beth Willan told CNN. "There were babies on the plane. And we are in dark and hot. You try to be patient but people were yelling and screaming.''

Even before the flight left Heathrow Airport, there were problems. The generators were not working, so neither was the air conditioning system, passengers said. The flight was supposed to leave at 5:33 p.m., London time. Two hours later, with the plane fixed, the flight took off for Newark.

But problems arose again because of storms in the New York area on Tuesday night. The airline needed to divert the plane. With no option to land at JFK, it landed at Connecticut's Bradley Airport, the company said.

When the plane, carrying 300 passengers and 14 crew, landed on the tarmac, the generators broke for the second time, passengers said. With no fresh air coming in, temperatures reached a baking 100 degrees, they said.