A woman has spoken out about how her holiday ended in a "disorganised mess" after her flight from Madeira to Bristol was cancelled suddenly. The airline issued an apology as dozens of passengers were left scrambling for a new flight back to Bristol this week.
Katie, from Bristol, was among a number of passengers left stranded at Funchal Airport, Madeira, trying to make their way back to England on Monday (July 11) on flight EZY6245.
Speaking to Bristol Live, Katie said: "All flights from Madeira were cancelled and we had to queue for ages to have our tickets rescheduled. There were no dedicated easyJet crew at Madeira's airport. We were lucky in that we were put on the flight to Gatwick, however, this is of course inconvenient for us as local Bristol people."
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Katie explained that they were told there wasn't another flight back to Bristol Airport until the following Monday (July 18). Passengers rushed to book themselves on the soonest, most convenient flight back to England - which was to London Gatwick leaving on Tuesday (July 12). Many of them, however, did not know if their place on board was secured.
"They oversold the tickets [for our new flight] and so some people had to wait until everyone had boarded to see if there were any spare seats, fortunately, there were. When we tried to do the mobile check-in before our flight it did not work and the member of staff simply said that they may have oversold the tickets and so we'd 'just have to get to the airport early to make sure we can check in to get a seat'."
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She claimed it was the customer service and lack of ground staff that let the airline down. "All in all, it was a disorganised mess, not solely due to easyJet. The cabin crew were excellent, but the whole situation was just poorly organised," Katie added.
The airline continues to battle staffing issues this summer - with proposed walkouts - which has led to many airlines cancelling flights very suddenly as demand for travel abroad soars. However, in Katie's case, the flight cancellation was not due to lack of staff.
Speaking on the cancelled Bristol flight, a spokesperson for easyJet said: “Like all airlines, easyJet experienced disruption to our Funchal flying programme on July 11, due to strong winds in Funchal meaning flights were able to arrive or depart at the airport. This included flight EZY6245 inbound from Bristol which diverted to Faro, however as the weather was not set to improve the aircraft returned to the UK and the flight and Katie's return flight from Funchal to Bristol were cancelled.
“The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority and we did all possible to minimise the impact of the disruption for customers, providing options to rebook or receive a refund as well as hotel accommodation and meals where required.
"We also arranged a coach transfer to Bristol for customers including Katie'who travelled the next day on flight EZY8136 to London Gatwick, to help get them home as soon as possible. While this was outside of our control, we would like to apologise to Katie and all customers for the inconvenience caused as a result of the weather.”
The spokesperson highlighted that easyJet is not the only airline that occasionally overbooks a small proportion of flights. "However in the majority of cases, we do not deny boarding," they added.
They explained how this decision is based on historic booking patterns where passengers do not show up for a flight and by filling these seats, it helps to keep prices lower for customers. "Should a passenger be unable to travel, we take our responsibilities very seriously, fully understanding how frustrating and inconvenient the situation can be."
The easyJet spokesperson continued: "We always seek volunteers and assist customers with rebooking their travel and ensure they receive the compensation which is due. We will always aim to avoid rebooking customers who have been disrupted on fully booked flights unless we are confident that historic booking patterns indicate other customers are unlikely to show and so while in this, like most cases, all passengers were able to travel, we very sorry for any worry this experience will have caused."
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