ISRAEL: Pilot Fails To Turn On AC, 4 Passengers Faint

Young Israeli passengers stand next to their Polish airline plane after they were stranded inside with no air conditioning during a heat wave,

Passengers stranded on powerless plane in heat wave.

Young Israeli travelers en route to Poland found themselves stuck inside a plane at Ben Gurion International Airport for two hours on Monday with no air conditioning, in the throes of a punishing heat wave. Four people on the plane fainted as the temperatures soared.

Four people faint after Enter Air flight to Poland is delayed at Ben Gurion Airport, and pilot cannot turn on air conditioning.

The dozens of Israeli teens were on their way to a week-long visit in Poland, but after boarding, the plane belonging to Polish carrier Enter Air failed to take off when a malfunction prevented the pilot from starting the engine and apparently the ventilation system too.

“People just couldn’t breathe. Some girls fainted. They asked the crew for water, but the crew didn’t do anything,” Alon Peltz, a passenger on the plane, told Israel’s Ynet website.

At some point, the pilot opened the door and “some kids stood on the stairs to breathe. Then everyone just left the plane and stood on the tarmac nearby,” said Peltz. She said one of the girls who fainted was evacuated by ambulance for treatment, but returned to the plane after feeling better.

“People wanted to go to the bathroom,” Peltz said. “They were dehydrated and no one cared. Police came here with a manager from the airport and they took us to the bathroom in the terminal. Then they told us we had to return to the plane because it was taking off.”

Representatives of Enter Air said the flight’s departure time had been moved up, but the plane had landed at the airport too late and missed its spot.

The departure was further delayed by the malfunction, company officials told Ynet. The company acknowledged that the plane had been grounded without air conditioning, but said the ground staff at the airport did not instruct the crew to evacuate it even when it became clear that there was a technical malfunction.

In a separate incident on Monday, an El Al plane en route from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv had to make an emergency landing in Vienna when a member of the crew fell ill.

The flight attendant began to feel unwell after takeoff, and left the plane in Vienna in order to receive medical treatment. The plane and its 345 passengers continued on their way to Tel Aviv.