Tale of flight stuck on ‘freezing Canadian island’ gets warm laughs in Newfoundland

Newfoundlanders are chuckling over an international media report saying passengers on a British Airways flight diverted to St. John’s were stranded on a “freezing Canadian island.”

Heather McKinnon, general manager at the Delta Hotel in St. John’s, says it was certainly difficult for many of the 255 passengers to be grounded in the city for about two days last week.

But McKinnon says she hopes most people know that Newfoundland and Labrador is not a frozen wasteland, as a headline on People magazine’s website seems to suggest.

She says the plane was grounded Tuesday because of a medical emergency and a storm blew in before the passengers left on Thursday afternoon.

McKinnon says some Delta staff used their personal vehicles to take passengers out shopping for diapers, toiletries and other essentials.

In the meantime, a video spoofing the People headline is attracting likes on Reddit for its David Attenborough-esque account of passengers marooned on a “frozen tundra.”