Yesterday, we told you about an Austrian airline that held its passengers for ransom until they paid an additional $31,500 for fuel. But here’s a story of passengers leveraging their numbers against the airline in order to be properly compensated.

Some of the passengers on a Hong Kong Airlines plane were so peeved about the 9-hour delay on the flight that when they finally reached their destination, they refused to deplane until the airline upped their $50/passenger compensation offer.

Initially, 80 passengers remained on the plane, though that number dwindled to 21 over the course of the five-hour standoff. The angry travelers wanted to be compensated for their hotel reservations that had gone unused because of the long flight delay.

Eventually, with help from airport police, the airline agreed to increase the compensation to $150.

After the standoff ended, some of the passengers told the media that what annoyed them wasn’t the money but the bad attitude of the airline staff.

A Hong Kong Airlines rep defends the company and, pointing out that many of the passengers involved in the standoff are from mainland China, chalks up the whole incident to cultural differences:

Our air staff never had any bad attitude towards the passenger… They tried to negotiate and explain that the compensation policy of HK airlines is different from mainland Chinese airlines.

Delayed passengers stage plane sit-in for refund [Chicago Tribune]

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