Tussle mars Halifax flight from Cuba

The Chronicle Herald

A flight from Cuba to Halifax was delayed and two unruly female passengers were denied entry to the jetliner after a disturbance at the Varadero airport, another passenger said Friday.

“It took four Cuban security guards to pull the two girls apart,” said a woman who flew back to Halifax aboard Air Canada Flight 717. She didn’t want her name used.

“They were drunk. Every word out of their mouths was an obscenity.”

The flight, which was ultimately delayed for about 21/2 hours, arrived in Halifax at about 1:30 a.m. Friday, the woman said.

She said the two combatants in the scuffle were part of a group of four females who were travelling together with three children and had taken the same flight that she took to Varadero on April 10.

The women arrived at the Varadero airport on Thursday night for the return flight with drinks in their hands, she said, and one of them hollered at the children in the terminal when they asked for something to eat.

“One of the blonds yelled at the kids, ‘You should have (expletive) eaten at the (expletive) resort because now we have no money,’” the passenger related.

“Everyone in the airport could hear them.”

Within earshot of the four women, she told the pilot she didn’t think they should be served alcohol on the flight to Halifax, she said.

“So the one girl says to me, ‘It’s none of your (expletive) business, lady,’” the woman recounted.

“So I said to the pilot we didn’t want to get on a plane with people like this and she chimed in, ‘So what if we’re (expletive) strippers, so what.’”

The passenger said she felt the four travelling companions had been over-served by flight staff on the trip to Cuba a week earlier.

“We were all wondering if they’d show up for the flight home,” she said.

“It was just like (the reality TV show) Jersey Shore, no sense of decency or shame, and so loud.”

But she said she felt the plane’s captain “handled the situation as well as it could be handled” at the airport before the return flight.

Two of the women weren’t allowed to board the plane and the other two weren’t served liquor on the flight, she said.

Asked whether the incident had ruined her vacation, the woman replied, “Oh no, I had a great vacation.”

A request for comment from Air Canada went unanswered Friday. It wasn’t known if the two women refused passage on the flight had yet returned to Halifax.

No other passengers of the flight could be contacted to verify the woman’s story.