Passengers slam BA flight for accidentally announcing emergency water landing

London, Jan 17 (ANI): Passengers on board a British Airways flight from Miami to London got the shock of their lives when cabin crew mistakenly announced the plane was going down and they should brace themselves for an emergency water landing.

As panic began to spread among the passengers - with many fearing they were about to die - a flight attendant came on over the intercom to apologise, saying the message was played in error.

Duncan and Tracey Farquharson, from London, were on Saturday's flight and have accused the airline of trivializing passengers' concerns.

They told the Daily Telegraph that staff issued a 'blase' apology and did not explain exactly what the error was until hours later, when they were landing at Heathrow.

Farquharson, 58, an engineer from Twickenham, London, said that the message was played after about three hours into the flight.

"We were about three hours into the flight when an automated message came over the tannoy saying: 'This is an emergency, we will shortly be making an emergency landing on water'," he said.

"We looked at each other and figured we were both about to die. Families with children were distraught and people were in tears. It was very distressing.

"About 30 seconds later one of the cabin crew told us to ignore the announcement and accept their apologies but the tone of suggested they had not grasped how seriously we had taken it.

"Imagining yourself plunging towards a cold, watery grave in the middle of the Atlantic is a pretty horrific thought but they seemed very blas? about it," he said.

Tracey, 51, an administrator, complained that the passengers were not given any explanation as to what had transpired.

"The captain didn't even say anything about it until when we were coming in to land and even that did not explain what had happened," she said.

"It still makes me very emotional thinking about it now - it was very traumatic. We're going to complain to British Airways about the way we were treated," she added.

However, a British Airways spokesman said cabin crew had apologised for the incident aboard the flight on Friday night and that staff spoke to passengers individually to reassure them.

"A pre-recorded emergency announcement was activated in error on our flight from Miami to Heathrow on Saturday January 14," the spokesman said.

"The cabin crew cancelled the announcement immediately and sought to reassure customers that the flight was operating normally.

"We would like to apologise to passengers on the flight for causing them undue concern.

"We take such matters seriously as safety is our paramount concern," the Spokesman added. (ANI)