Airlines Refuse to Fly Rowdy Influencers Home After In-Flight Party to Cancún

Well if it isn't the consequences of my own actions!

Airlines Refuse to Fly Rowdy Influencers Home After In-Flight Party to Cancún
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You think you’ve seen it all … until a clip of what are apparently Canadian influencers and reality stars dancing, vaping, drinking and, yes, even crowdsurfing — all while unmasked — on a privately chartered plane hits social media.

Earlier this week, clips from a Cancún-bound Sunwing Airlines flight from Montreal leaked in which several young adults can be seen partying and generally wreaking havoc with no regard for in-flight protocols.

“It looks like a college frat party,” TMZ said of the scene. “And if you’re wondering where the flight crew was and how they could let things get this out of hand … word is, the attendants actually gave up trying to establish order with this raucous bunch, and hid away toward the front and/or back, letting the passengers have their way.”

It’s garnered so much attention, in fact, that even Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has taken the time to weigh in on the incident, saying: “It’s a slap in the face to see people putting themselves, putting their fellow citizens, putting airline workers at risk by being completely irresponsible.”

But the big news of the day is that the passengers in question are now stranded in Cancún, per a new report from CNN, with airlines — Sunwing, Air Canada and Air Transat chief among them — refusing to fly them home. Sunwing, for its part, canceled the scheduled return flight originally scheduled for January 5 because the group would not agree to the terms outlined by the airline.

The terms you ask? According to TripleOne president and the event’s organizer, James William Awad, the group agreed that they would be willing to concede on alcohol service … but not food.

“We couldn’t conclude an agreement because Sunwing refused to provide meals to the group for a five-hour flight,” Awad said in a statement.

That’s right: the same group of people who couldn’t not crowdsurf for the entirety of their flight to Mexico can’t overlook a detail as minute as plane food for the sake of being able to get back home. To be clear, the service is being denied only as a consequence of the group’s previous actions, which, I might add, are among some of the most chaotic we’ve seen amid a banner year for in-flight transgressions. Like, really, that was where you chose to put your foot down? A free airplane meal?

The biggest takeaway here is that while there are certainly worse places to be stranded, we seem to have finally arrived at a moment of reckoning where unruly passengers are involved. Not only are the passengers facing fines of up to $5,000 Canadian dollars per offense and potential jail time, but airlines are banding together to refuse them service and they are — albeit temporarily — quite literally stranded in Mexico for the time being. Frankly, it’s about time. It’s not difficult to not dance in the aisles of the aircraft, vape and jeopardize the overall safety and security of the crew and other passengers onboard. Travel is a privilege and it should be treated as such, regardless of how many social media followers one has.

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