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GERMANY: AIRLINE PASSENGERS forced their aircraft to be grounded by petitioning the pilot after two aborted takeoff attempts.
The Boeing 737-800, a new jet belonging to Air Berlin, was due to fly 172 passengers from Nuremberg in southern Germany to Faro in Portugal on Sunday.
Take-off however was delayed after the pilot discovered that his cockpit display screen was giving false information about the aircraft's landing flaps. He returned it to the terminal and the passengers disembarked.
The aircraft was repaired, according to Air Berlin, but shortly before a second take-off attempt, a flight attendant fainted. Passengers interpreted her collapse as a further sign that the aircraft was unsafe.
Reminded of last month's Madrid plane crash, passengers refused to board a third time. Instead, led by Zbigniew and Elisabeth Kaszubski, a Polish couple, they signed a petition demanding a new aircraft and handed it to the pilot.
Air Berlin heeded the petition and sent for a replacement aircraft. "From our point of view, the passengers overreacted," a spokeswoman for the airline said.
After a 15-hour wait, all but two of the passengers who refused to fly in the original aircraft were taken to Faro in a replacement jet from Turkey.

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