Most people don’t bring their passports with them when flying domestically, but one traveler discovered that might be a mistake. In a video posted by a user on TikTok, she filmed another passenger as he explained how their flight from Puerto Rico to Miami ended up with them stranded in an airplane terminal!
He explained that they were on American Airlines flight 2421 and were circling around for two hours before the pilot announced they needed to land in the Bahamas, where the passengers would then exit the plane. Because they were on a domestic flight, when the pilot asked who had their passports, no one had them, meaning they couldn’t leave the terminal, let alone the airport, because they legally could not go through customs.
The speaker explained that most people on the flight only spoke Spanish, so he had to translate the information from the gate agents over the speaker. Elderly people and dogs were among those stuck at the terminal, and during the seven hours they were there, they only had Biscoff cookies as their source of food.
The average time for a flight between San Juan, Puerto Rico and Miami, Florida, is about 2.5 hours, and by the time the TikTok was filmed, about nine hours had passed since they departed from Puerto Rico.
According to American Airlines, the passengers were put in this rare situation due to the weather. The moral of the story: is that it can never hurt to bring your passport, even on domestic flights, especially when flying to areas known for storms or hurricanes.