The captain identified a braking problem which was at first thought not to be important. Engineers were called but the passengers were allowed to advance through to the boarding gate. Mr Phillips said the engineers then found that the fault was more serious than first thought and the flight had to be cancelled...
..."At this point a small number of passengers - three or four - became extremely aggressive with airport staff and airline personnel.
Sure, we'll just take off with a plane we are not sure will be able to brake when it lands on Rovaniemi's single 3000m runway (which, given they are at 66 degrees north and it's winter might just be a bit, you know, slippy) and just trust that Rudolf the Fecking Red Nosed Reindeer will hang onto the tail and fly backwards to help keep down the landing roll distance. Alternatively we just go sliding of the end right through Santas bleedin' workshop whilst the engines ingest a few elves - that'll make Duwaine and Chaveera's Christmas complete won't it.
Look as well as being a little green dragon I'm also a qualified pilot (probably one of the few dragons around who actually does have a licence to flap his wings!) and I can tell you for nothing that a set of fully functioning brakes is most definitely on the Minimum Equipment List1. Aside from keeping you on the runway when you land you do rather need them to steer the plane and also come to a nice gentle halt at the gate - piling the nose of your plane into the departures lounge like in Airplane is generally regarded as bad form.
Yes it's sad that Dweezul and Charlene didn't get to paw Santa's beard with their Sunny Delight covered hands whilst demanding mobile phones, plasma screen tellys and XBox 360s but planes "go tech" sometimes and it's annoying. The chap in the epaulettes and silly hat has thousands of hours experience in making the plane go up and down and he says it's not going you should really trust him and take it up, ideally in a civilised manner, with the tour company. However throwing your toys out of the pram and behaving worse than your offspring is kind of what you would expect these days.
Hopefully they ban this kind of pond scum from ever setting foot on an aircraft again.
Yeah... fat chance.
1The MEL is a list of things your plane must have before you start, surprisingly functioning fuel guages aren't on it - you're supposed to know you've enough fuel to get there.
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