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With plane stuck, passengers rerouted
By Ed Runyan
VIENNA
The plane load of passengers unable to fly out of the Youngstown-Warren Regional Airport on Monday night because of snow-related trouble flew out of Pittsburgh International Airport at noon Tuesday and arrived in Florida about 2 p.m.
The passengers were bused from Vienna to Pittsburgh on Tuesday morning, said Dan Dickten, director of Aviation for the local airport.
Allegiant was paying for the passengers to stay in a hotel overnight and for the bus ride to Pittsburgh, Dickten said.
The flight to St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport on Allegiant Air was delayed because the airplane that arrived to take them Monday night to Florida became stuck in the grass alongside the taxiway.
The aircraft landed safely but skidded off the taxiway while turning. There were no injuries.
The passengers on the incoming flight were taken from the airplane in a bus and brought to the airport terminal.
On Tuesday, a semi tow truck was pulling the aircraft out of the mud. It will be inspected, but Dickten said nothing was visibly wrong with it.
The Federal Aviation Administration had come to the airport to investigate Tuesday, but Dickten said he didn’t expect the review to suggest any problem with the airport’s runway or taxiways.
The flight landed in snowy conditions, and that may have contributed to the incident, Dickten said.
Stephanie Gibson, a 19-year-old resident of Cape Coral, Fla., who attends the University of Central Florida, was among the passengers waiting for the Monday night flight to Florida.
When her flight was canceled, she went back to her father’s house in Girard and returned to the airport Tuesday morning for the bus trip to Pittsburgh, she said Tuesday afternoon from Florida.
She and her mother, Elaine Makar-Woods, of Cape Coral, say they were impressed that airport and airline officials took extra care with the passengers whose flight was delayed.
“They went so far above and beyond to make sure everyone was taken care of,” Makar-Woods said.
“We fly a lot, and we just started using Allegiant, so we didn’t know how things would work out because they are a small airline. It could have been a disaster, but what they did was so nice,” Makar-Woods said.
Gibson said she was especially impressed that officials went in their own vehicle to accompany the passengers to Pittsburgh to make sure the rest of their journey went smoothly, she said.
“I didn’t need a hotel, but they got us all breakfast and stayed with us,” Gibson said.