Passenger says treated like 'roaches' after Delta flight diverted to Portuguese island

Passengers on board a Delta flight from Ghana to New York, which was diverted to the Terceira Islands in Portugal last week, alleged that they had to beg for food, told to drink water from bathroom faucets and asked not to start a “revolution”.

According to one of the passengers, Nana Asante-Smith, who narrated the incident in a Facebook post on September 10, the Delta flight was headed to New York from Ghana on September 8 when the pilot “made an unexpected, sharp right turn” around five hours after takeoff.

She said the pilot informed them that the plane was being diverted due to a “mechanical issue”. Asante-Smith added that their destination then changed from New York to Terceira Islands in Portugal.

“One flight attendant told one of our guests that we were being diverted because someone was very ill on the plane,” Asante-Smith wrote. She said that the cabin crew assured her that the oxygen level was low in the cockpit but “everything was just fine”.

A spokesperson for Delta Air Lines told Insider that Flight 157 was diverted to a Portuguese island in the Atlantic due to a “mechanical issue with a backup oxygen system”.

The spokesperson added that the oxygen in the cabin and cockpit was normal but the plane landed at the Lajes Airport in TerceiraIslands out of “an abundance of caution”.

In her post, Asante-Smith shared that once they landed on the island the passengers were sent to “a partitioned section of the building without access to freely move around the airport because those with Ghanaian passports did not have the requisite visas”.

The crew members, she said, went to a hotel, “not to be seen again”.

Asante-Smith claimed that the airport officials did not provide food to the stranded passengers and only those with a credit card could purchase something from a small cafe. When asked about drinking water by a passenger, “a woman wearing a white shirt” told the man that he could drink from the bathroom faucets.

Asante-Smith said that after “begging and pleading” they were given “paper bags with ham sandwiches (that many could not eat due to dietary restrictions associated with pork), juice boxes and cookies/crackers”.

The aggrieved passenger also said that an airport representative told the passengers to “not start ‘a revolution’ and ‘be grateful for a second chance at life’”.

“We were abandoned by Delta and treated like encroaching roaches by airport representatives on Terceira Islands,” she said.

Twitter

Another passenger on the flight, Ghanaian rapper Sakordie, shared a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday, saying that he missed his event in Detroit due to the flight diversion. He said he “sat at the airport for about six hours” and wasn’t given any reason for the emergency landing.

“This isn’t new with that airline, especially from this part of the world ( Africa ) they keep sending these weak old flights ( business class almost the same as economy ) to pick us up knowing very well they are not safe but still risk lives,” Sakordie wrote.

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