At least nine Sierra Leoneans, among them four women, have been left stranded for six days now in Vietnam and later Thailand after their Kenya Airways plane suffered “an engine problem”.
Speaking to Politico on the line from Bangkok, the passengers who were among over 200 other passengers said they were all government officials on their way from a seminar in China.
They said the flight had developed a technical problem and made an emergency landing in Hanoi on 27 September where they were “abandoned to sleep on the floor” for days,. They said the said flight had since left for Nairobi with no confirmation on when they would return home.
The stranded Sierra Leonean passengers are mostly from the ministries of agriculture and trade and industry.
The airline officials “kept assuring us that we would soon leave for home, they even gave us a new boarding pass everyday all of which turned out to be a hoax”, said one of them who does not wish to be named.
Vietnamese authorities later asked them to leave the country since they didn't have a visa and they were later flown on a light aircraft to Bangkok where they are still stranded.
They said they were taken to a hotel very far away but had been brought back to the airport where they alleged they were left "in the cold weather".
Kenya Airways couldn't be reached for a comment.
Copyright (c) Politico 2016
