An Air Canada (ADH2) flight from Calgary (YYC) to Frankfurt (FRA) was held up for two hours on New Year’s Eve due to the unruly behavior of some hockey players.
The Air Canada Boeing 787-9 was scheduled to depart YYC at 17:45, December 31, 2021 MST (00:45 UTC, January 1, 2022). Among the passengers were several hockey teams , who had been due to play in the IIHF World Junior Hockey Championship. As the Championship was cancelled due to COVID-19, the teams were returning back to Europe.
However, as the flight was preparing to take off, the Russian hockey team reportedly started misbehaving. According to other passengers, they were trying to smoke cigarettes, refusing to wear masks and playing loud music.
We were also on this flight, in business class. Russian coach was trying to vape in his seat, wouldn’t wear his mask, and then he played Russian rock music full blast on his phone. What a way to spend NYE, amirite?
— Aggie (@aggieloveseggs) January 1, 2022
The Calgary Herald reports that the police were called, and the whole flight was deplaned. According to Radarbox data, the aircraft finally took off at 19:48 MST (2:48 GMT).
However, two teams were prevented from boarding. Along with the Russians, the players from Czechia were also not allowed to take the flight.
DW reports that, according to Czech team manager Otakar Cerny, his team was not misbehaving, but because theirsweatshirts were similar to those of the Russian players, they were thrown “into the same bag as Russians”.
However, Cerny said that Air Canada (ADH2) representatives later apologized for the mix-up, and arranged a hotel and a flight to Frankfurt at the company’s expense.
According to CBC, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) has opened an investigation into the incident to determine if the Russian team violated the federation’s ethics code.