Czech team mistakenly caught up after police “swarmed” plane carrying Russian World Juniors team.

Earlier today we reported on a situation that went down on New Year's Eve involving the team representing Russia at the International Ice Hockey Federation's World Junior Championship. While that news was unfortunate, new details are emerging that make things considerably worse in my estimation.

For those of you who missed our earlier report, police reportedly "swarmed" a plane that was boarding passengers at the Calgary International Airport on Friday night after flight attendants had issues with members of the Russian World Juniors team. Some reports have indicated players were involved, other reports have indicated that it was the management and not the players who caused the incident, and right now details on that are still somewhat hazy.

Regardless of who was responsible, we know that drunkenness, smoking on the plane, and a lack of mask wearing on board the plane, combined with disobeying instructions from the flight crew are what led to police intervening. Passengers were forced to disembark, and both the Russian and the Czech teams were kicked off of the plane and not allowed to fly to Frankfurt, Germany where it was destined to land.

Now however, members of the Czech team are expressing their displeasure at how things were handled.  According to a report from Czech outlet iDNES, Otakar Cerny the team's manager says his players were unfairly lumped in with the Russians due to a similarity in their uniforms. According to Cerny both teams were wearing very similar looking grey Nike sweatshirts, resulting in the flight crew lumping them all in together and removing them from the plane. To their credit however, it sounds like Air Canada stepped in and did their best to remedy the situation after realizing a mistake had been made.

"Although we explained to the Air Canada representatives for about thirty minutes that our players had not violated anything, their decision could not be reversed," said Cerny as per iDNES. "Slightly bizarre about the whole situation is that after the plane took off without us, Air Canada representatives apologized to us and at their expense arranged a hotel and a flight to Frankfurt at the same time a day later. They also assured us that we would not fly the same flight as the Russian hockey players"

Although I am only speculating here, I have to imagine that a potential language barrier may have also contributed to the misunderstanding between the team and the flight crew. 

Cerny was also able to provide more specific details on what led to the police being forced to intervene, confirming reports that multiple members of the Russian team were not wearing masks and that some had even been caught smoking. Earlier reports have indicated there was smoking on the plane itself but, while that may still be the case, Cerny says he witnessed a member of the Russian team smoking in the tunnel before they even boarded.

"Then we got on a plane and it should be noted, at that moment we noticed that some members of the Russian expedition obviously did not follow the hygienic rules and alcohol probably played a role in that. One of the members of the Russian implementation team even smoked in the tunnel before boarding the plane. Some of the passengers then complained about the Russians' behavior, and the crew therefore had the entire plane evacuated."

It's hard not to feel bad for the young men of the Czech team who were trapped in a foreign country on New Year's Eve, but thankfully it sounds like they will be getting home in short order and at no additional expense.