2 False Starts Mar Jet’s Flight to Hawaii

Taking off for Maui was easy for the 254 passengers aboard United Airlines Flight 45. Getting there was anything but.

A mechanical glitch followed by a medical emergency forced the flight back to Los Angeles International Airport, not once, but twice Friday, according to passengers and airline officials.

Ten hours after they set out, passengers were back where they started, tired, hungry and irritated, with no clue about what to do next.

“It’s like a comedy of errors,” said one frustrated traveler, Tatiana Regalado of Simi Valley. “This is supposed to be an 11-day vacation. Now it’s 10 days.”

She, husband Ben and their daughters, ages 9 and 15, had planned their trip to the Hawaiian island for about a year, she added.

According to passenger accounts, a pressurization problem forced the initial return, which the airline said occurred more than two hours after the 8:10 a.m. departure.

By afternoon, a second Boeing 767 was located and Flight 45 took off once again, at 3:30 p.m., an airline spokeswoman said.

Free drinks were served to the weary passengers, who slowly settled in for what they thought would be the final flight.

Then came the crew’s announcement: The captain was turning back because of a medical emergency, Regalado said.

“People were shocked, you could hear them catch their breath. They kind of looked at each other, like, ‘Is this really happening?’ Then, people started to get angry,” she said.

The emergency, she and other passengers discovered, was with a first-class passenger with a swelling finger that was being cut by her ring, she said. At 5:32 p.m. Flight 45 landed at LAX again.

Airline spokeswoman Susana Leyva confirmed the flight’s yo-yo path, although she could not specify what mechanical and medical problems forced the returns.

“Everyone is safe,” said Leyva, who added that such a convergence of problems is unusual, even with an airline that has 2,400 daily flights worldwide.

“We’re trying to make everyone as comfortable as possible.”

Part of the comforting came in the form of $7 lunch and $10 dinner vouchers, Regalado said. United employees went to buy baby formula, diapers and other items that passengers asked for, since their luggage was checked and out of reach.

Most passengers stayed around the gate area, waiting for word on whether they would leave Friday night. Flying today appeared out of the question; all flights to Maui are heavily booked, Leyva said.

By 8 p.m., there was new hope: Passengers were told a third jet and fresh crew had been found. By 9:30 they were on their way again.

“I’m hoping it’s really going to happen this time,” Regalado said. “They’ve said this kind of thing before. I just want to get across the Pacific.”