Quebec passengers stuck on Porter Airlines plane for 7 hours recall ‘nightmare’ experience

Three Montreal-area residents were going home to Montreal from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in what was supposed to be a short three-hour flight that turned into a 'nightmare' ordeal.

A Montreal-area couple and their friend are calling out Porter Airlines for what they said was a “total nightmare” travel experience that left them with over a thousand dollars of incurred costs.

Alessio Recine, his wife Azzurra Billig, and their friend Marie Lessard and her partner were travelling home to Montreal Trudeau Airport from Fort Lauderdale, FL., in what was supposed to be a short three-hour flight that turned into a nearly seven hour ordeal — stuck on the plane.

The Porter Flight PD572 boarded at 4:30 p.m. on March 30. “The doors close. We think we’re leaving, but instead we stayed on that airplane for more than six hours without leaving the tarmac,” Recine told Global News on Friday.

He reached out to Global weeks after the incident, after waiting for the airline to compensate him and his wife for the ordeal.

“It turned into an over 12-hour ordeal that included: almost no provisions or support provided onboard, no accommodations for the night, no food vouchers, and no guidance beyond ‘call customer service’ — which had a 90+ minute wait time,” Recine wrote in an email to Porter.

He continued, “A sudden cancellation announced over the intercom after hours of vague updates, no staff present at the gate afterward, and no assistance offered to stranded passengers. We were left with no choice but to book a new flight and hotel ourselves, paying out of pocket and facing significant stress and disruption as a result.”

He says he submitted a full compensation claim with receipts totaling nearly $1,700 on April 2 and received no meaningful response. He says when he called to follow up, he was told claims were still being processed from mid-February.

“They had nothing helpful to tell us when we go off the plane at 11:30 p.m.,” said the couple’s friend and fellow passenger Marie Lessard. “Seven hours stuck on a plane without food. There were parents on the flight with children. It took an upset mother demanding water for the flight staff to finally distribute water to passengers.”