American Airlines Denies It Let Passengers Vote to Brave Storm

American Airlines today denied a published report that the pilot of a New York-bound flight let the passengers vote on whether to fly into a storm.

The crew did ask for a show of hands from passengers aboard Flight 492 from Chicago to LaGuardia last week but it was to determine how many passengers wanted to return immediately to Chicago once the flight landed at another airport--Stewart Airport outside Newburgh in the Hudson Valley--to which it had been diverted, spokesman Tom Stack said.

“The decision had already been made to divert (the flight). That was never a decision in the passengers’ hands,” he said.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported in today’s editions that passengers on the flight last Thursday were asked by the pilot while in the air whether they wanted to return to O’Hare or continue their journey in view of storms that were sweeping the East Coast and South.

The newspaper said the passengers voted to take their chances on the storm and wound up being diverted to Newburgh, where a tornado that day smashed into a school cafeteria wall, killing eight students.