A passenger on the ‘flight from hell” on Christmas Eve in Ireland when US -bound travelers were kept on a plane for seven hours has described what happened.

It turns out that a door in the aircraft was stuck and it took over three hours to open it.

He contacted online site journal.ie and recounted what happened when the 300 passengers boarded the US Air flight bound for Philadelphia from Dublin at 1.p.m on Christmas Eve. Flight 723 was originally due to leave at 11.05.

“We were told around 2:30-3pm that we were awaiting de-icing by a 3rd party company (ServisAir) that was out of US Airways control. Eventually the de-icer showed up. At around 4pm we were told the flight was cancelled as the runway/airport had been closed (due to a small plane turning onto the main runway I believe).

About 30 minutes later we were told we were being made an exception and would, in fact, be taking off. The crew gave us sandwiches – there was lunch on board.

At around 5:15pm we were told that the flight was cancelled because the flight crew had exceeded the number of hours (or would including the flight time) that they are legally allowed work by the FAA (14-16 hours)

Then – and this is what had most of the passengers so angry – it took nearly three hours to get the gate door open. We were sitting at the gate, not on the tarmac. The pilot called the Gardai to get the DAA and Airport police to get someone to open the door. 3 hours to open gate 418 in T2 – where there are practically more staff than passengers!!