Thai Airways to Sue Passenger for Complaining on Facebook about Flight Diversion

TEMPO.CO, Jakarta - Thailand's national airline said Thursday it is taking legal action against a passenger posted a complaint on the airline's social media account. Thai Airways said that the complaint was delivered using damaging words.

On January 28, the passenger was traveling from Bangkok to Melbourne on an Airbus A350. The flight was diverted to Sydney due to poor visibility, causing it to land over four hours later than scheduled, per data from Flightradar24.

The decision to divert the flight was because the weather in Melbourne was quite poor, reducing sky and ground visibility to 200 just meters, so it would've been dangerous to attempt a landing.

But one passenger went to Facebook to criticize the captain's judgment and claimed that there was no need to divert because he believed the weather was fine and that there were other planes landing at the same time. He went on to speculate on the airplane's fuel levels and questioned the cabin crew's assertiveness with air traffic controllers

One of the airline's pilots is Captain Faisal who has a popular Facebook page and a famous Thai blogger responded to the complaint. The pilot said that weather reports for aviation are specialized and not included in standard smartphone weather apps. He further stressed that the decision to divert was in line with universal safety standards.

National newspaper Thairath reported that the passenger deleted his post after the captain's rebuttal and planned to apologize to the captain and the airline the next time he is in Thailand.  

But that night not be enough as Thai Airways said it was preparing to start legal procedures, because an online post can affect public confidence in the company.  

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