Passenger's joke over airline crew staying out late partying delays flight for SIX HOURS while crew is drug tested

A U.S. Airways passenger's joke about the flight's crew having been up all night partying delayed the flight for several hours as the entire crew was consequently drug tested.



The flight scheduled for departure at 9am from Des Moines, Iowa was already two hours behind when its passengers were told the delay was over the crew’s previous flight coming in late the night before.



Boarding around 11am, passenger Glen Clark of Waterloo overheard another man ask the crew if the delay was because they had partied too hard.

Consequences: A US Airways flight was delayed for several hours on Saturday after a passenger's joke about the crew having been up late partying led to a lengthy drug test (file photo)

'He said it jokingly,' Mr Clark told the Des Moines Register, 'and I didn't really think much of it, personally.'



He added that other passengers around him laughed at the suggestion.



Once seated, however, the pilot came on the loud speaker saying the crew would be taking a drug test, because of what had been said.

‘It was a bad experience for us today,’ Mr Clark said once it was all over.



After an hour and a half wait, while the drug tests were administered to the crew, an inquiring passenger rose up to the pilot, asking for an explanation.



'It's one of these things where if someone makes a comment, makes an accusation ... God forbid something happened,' he said according to passenger Jim McClelland who recorded their conversation and presented it to WHO-TV.

Not funny: That passenger who made the joke at the Des Moines Airport, pictured, was not let back on the plane according to passengers

'Everybody in the station is fairly insistent about it. My thought is, "Come up here and smell my breath." If we have problems, [we`ll] get off. Otherwise, we're going,' the pilot said.



Airline spokeswoman Tina Swail confirmed the original delay over the crew's previous flight arriving late the night before.



As per the crew’s rest contract, they required a two-hour delay.



Six hours after their originally scheduled flight to Charlotte, North Carolina, at 1pm the plane finally took off.



Mr Clark said once they had all re-boarded, the passenger who made the joke, wasn't let back on.



He said he saw the man seated outside the gate while he and his wife boarded with the rest of the other passengers.



Swail says the airline takes any accusation like this very seriously.

