Seosamh – yes absolutely. I have no power to keep you onboard.

Fair do’s, I’m surprised at that tbh, cheers tomkerton. 🙂

hey TomKerton i’ve got a question for you! 😀

My wife edits airline manuals for a living and notes that amongst the various animals that need particular treatment during air transit, there’s a category for “one day old chicks”. There’s a category for eggs, and one day old chicks, but not 2 day old chicks or fully grown chickens or cockerels or anything else in the chicken family.

What’s so special about one day old chicks?

What’s so special about one day old chicks?

The crunch makes them a delicacy

You’re quite right. the manual says…

Company Policy on Day Old Chicks and Turkey Poults

These are packed in pre-prepared crates, stacked and ready for loading. The birds generate a lot of warmth and water in such concentrations and the packs are designed to minimise heat loss yet allow sufficient air circulation for their well-being. The flight time should be limited to 5 hours.

So I think that the significance of that paragraph is that they can go,in the unheated hold (as they generate a lot of heat) whilst live animals have to go in the small heated hold so from the airlines point of view different levels of care would be required. You’d have to,ask a poultry farmer what’s the difference between a one day and two day old poult.

Tom.. So… About the plane taking off on the conveyor belt but with one day old chicks flapping away… Is this possible?

I’d have to check with the performance specialists at head office Cloud9!

Authority of commander of an aircraft

141. Every person in an aircraft must obey all lawful commands which the commander of that aircraft may give for the purpose of securing the safety of the aircraft and of persons or property carried in the aircraft, or the safety, efficiency or regularity of air navigation.

From the ANO

I suspect that if you could argue that by getting off the plane you might be having a detrimental effect on the ‘efficiency or regularity of air navigation’ then the aircraft commander could order the pax to stay on board. I have certainly witnessed an occasion when a transatlantic flight landed at a certain regional airport because Heathrow had problems. The aircraft stayed on the ground for 14 hours and nobody was let off, not even those whose subsequent flight was to fly back from Heathrow to the place they were sitting.. Must’ve been Hell!

The situation you describe imnotverygood could,be down to the airport authority. Whilst I cannot stop someone getting off… if the airport will not/cannot provide steps or facilities for my passengers then clearly no one can disembark.

This situation arises when a major airfield closes because of a crash or a weather phenomenon (snow mainly) and large numbers of aircraft divert to regional airfields.

I’ve been on an aircraft which did something similar – though thankfully the delay was rather less than that. IIRC we were supposed to be going to Stansted and ended up at Luton for a bit. Lots of people wanted to disembark and weren’t allowed. The irritating bit was that they didn’t decide they needed more fuel for the hop until after stuff was moving again so we ended up at the back of the queue waiting to refuel when we’d been one of the first aircraft to arrive there after diversion.