- United Airlines passengers en route to Rome last month were stuck on the plane for more than 7 hours.
- Scott Rosnov, a passenger in business class, told Insider that it felt like being taken "hostage."
A United Airlines passenger who was trapped on a plane for more than seven hours on the runway said it felt "like being tortured" after being left without food or air conditioning.
Scott Rosnov and his wife were on United Airlines flight UA40 from Newark International Airport in Newark, New Jersey, to Leonardo da Vinci-Fiumicino Airport in Rome on July 3 when it failed to take off because of a technical issue.
The couple were on their way to their long-awaited honeymoon and had splurged on business-class tickets, he said.
Rosnov told Insider that the flight was initially delayed for only 20 minutes after flight personnel identified a problem with the air conditioning.
But after multiple attempts to fix it and two attempts at taxiing, the flight was eventually delayed for more than seven hours before it was then canceled.
"We boarded the plane at 4:40 p.m. and didn't get off until about between 12:30 and 12:45 a.m.," he said.
Other passengers were reportedly left in sweltering heat without food or water and were given little information about what was happening.
Rosnov told Insider that the pilot communicated with the passengers only two times throughout the entire ordeal and that the flight attendants "just didn't care."
"The flight attendants and the pilots did a horrible job from top to bottom," Rosnov told Insider. "I'm not calling them bad people, but they just didn't care. It was as almost as if they knew this flight wasn't going anywhere the whole time."
"We just weren't treated well, we were kind of treated a little inhumanely even from that perspective. Forget being locked on a plane hostage for eight hours, they just didn't do anything to help," he added.
Rosnov said he knew something was off when he boarded the plane because of how hot it was, adding: "I was expecting it to be cold like every time you board any plane, but sweat was dripping from my forehead."
Business-class passengers were each given a bottle of water, Rosnov said, adding that he found it odd that a flight attendant told him that she "had to look for some" because they were running low when he asked for another.
"We're just about to be on a nine-hour flight — how do you not have water?" he said. "Of all this, we had it way better being upfront in first class. I feel way worse for the people sitting behind us."
Another passenger in economy class told Newsweek that they were barely given any water and that a girl passed out "due to heat exhaustion."
Rosnov told Insider that the plane erupted into "pandemonium" when their second attempt at taxiing was aborted.
"At that point, people started standing up and saying 'screw the rules,'" he said. "You could smell the food in the hot boxes. So this is almost like being tortured a little bit. We didn't even get a pretzel, not a peanut, nothing."
Rosnov also said there was about "three to four hours between when we were told the plane was returning to the gate and when we were able to get off the actual plane."
Though the incident occurred in early July, it didn't come to public attention until after passengers posted about it on social media.
Rosnov, who had to spend thousands to book a hotel room and a new flight to Rome from John F. Kennedy Airport the following day, told Insider that he was still waiting on a refund.
"I get cancellations can happen, but it didn't have to come at the expense of holding hostage human lives," he added.
A spokesperson for United Airlines told Insider in a statement that the flight returned to the gate at Newark to "address a temperature issue."
"Once there, we offered customers the opportunity to deplane and later provided snacks and beverages. Our crew eventually exceeded their legally permitted duty hours and we had to cancel the flight," a spokesperson said.
"We regret we couldn't provide our customers a better travel experience and offered compensation in the hopes of having an opportunity to welcome them back," the spokesperson added.
United Airlines and the US Department of Transportation said it would investigate the incident.