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Contact photographer Karl Nixon

What: Albanian Airlines Boeing 737-300 en route from Tirana’s Mother Theresa International Airport in Albania to Bologna Italy
Where: Bratislava
When: Jan 17th 2010
Who: 110 passengers
Why: After boarding a flight from Tirana Albania to Bologna Italy, passengers were actually flown to Bratislava Slovakia. Disgruntled unpaid crew members flew their paying passengers to Bratislava (instead of Bologna) in protest for not receiving wages, or at least that is what the crew told the passengers.

Albanian Airlines leases the plane from Air Slovakia, and the Czech pilots are employed by Air Slovakia. Air Slovakia denies owing wages, and claims that the diversion was due to technical problems. Albanian Airlines says they knew of nothing technical wrong with the plane (which is also technically grounded in repairs with Bratislavan maintenance.)

Meanwhile, passengers alerted the media as soon as they arrived in Bratislava that the crew reported they had diverted (hijacked? passengernapped?) the plane because of unpaid wages. Passengers were put up in hotel accommodations in Bratislava (I’d have liked to see the accommodations!) and were supposed to have departed Monday. It is not reported whether or not the crew was put up with accommodations in jail.

George’s Point of View

Is this starting to sound like an episode of Wings, only with everyone in the cast speaking in a Tony Shalhoub version of a Bratislavan accent?

And you can be very proud that not once did I make a snide, uncalled-for reference to “brat” and “slave” and “protesting” “unpaid” pilots. Well. Maybe once. We do believe in pilots getting paid–but we also tend to prefer pilots who take passengers to their expected destinations.