A dad has told how his family were stranded abroad after their flight to Edinburgh was scrapped at the last minute with no warning.
John Mounsey, his eight-year-old little girl, and six other family members were left on a Greek island after easyJet pulled the plug on the flight. Although the airline reimbursed the family for their extraordinary expenses, bosses have yet to do so for the flight itself.
The airline said the cancellation was classified as an "extraordinary circumstance" due to air traffic control restrictions and, as such, outside of its control. So in line with regulations this means no compensation is due.
“I’ve had lots of messages from airline compensation accounts, and it’s one of those things. I don’t want to go down that road because it’s more irritating than anything else, but the airline is essentially blaming the weather in Amsterdam to avoid compensation,” said John.
He travelled abroad to Rhodes with his partner, daughter, stepson, in-laws and two other children. When the family left their resort on Monday afternoon, they had expected to be landing in Edinburgh later that night.
“We had received a few flight updates throughout the day. First the flight was delayed by an hour, then another hour. We were told our 10pm flight was delayed until midnight. It’s not ideal, but it happens,” said John.
“We left the resort at 7pm as scheduled, and when we got to the airport, the screens were not showing up-to-date information and there was no easyJet staff around.”
John was in the lounge watching football on his phone when his partner received an app update about their flight.
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“She looked up and told me the flight had been rescheduled for Tuesday at 2.30pm. I thought she was messing with me. There were no staff around and no screen updates. People with paper tickets were completely in the dark,” he said.
"People were trying to communicate with easyJet through live chats and phone calls. It was total chaos from start to finish.”
Eventually, passengers were taken onto the tarmac, around the building, and were forced to go back through border security to gather their luggage from carousels.
“At one point, we probably walked right by our plane. The plane and the crew had landed in Rhodes, but we were later told they had run out of flying hours and were not able to get us back to Edinburgh,” he said.
According to John, his family was boarding a coach to a hotel at 1am on Monday morning. However, some passengers were left entirely without accommodation or were forced to make bookings with their own time and money.
“We got a hotel because we were travelling with my eight year old daughter. A lot of people were left in limbo and booked hotels off their own backs. We were put in a hotel overnight and given breakfast, but the next day we had to go through it all again.”
The rescheduled flight went ahead as scheduled on Tuesday. Once on board, the pilot asked if anyone had been left without a hotel overnight, and according to John, at least ten-twelve people raised their hands.
John made a compensation claim to the company, and in a response he shared with Edinburgh Live. The airline confirmed that he was not eligible for compensation payment.
“To further explain what happened on the day; your plane was delayed on earlier flights due to air traffic control restrictions across Amsterdam [...] due to adverse weather. The delays continued throughout the day and knocked on to later flights. Ultimately and in the case of this flight, the delay pushed our crew into their maximum legal operating hours. There are strict industry wide rules on the number of hours our crew are legally allowed to work. To protect the safety of our customers and crew, these hours cannot be exceeded,” the response continued.
“Compensation is only payable when a flight is delayed by three or more hours after the scheduled arrival time, or the flight is cancelled and the reason for the delay or cancellation was within our control.”
Bosses at easyJet added that regardless of whether a delay is outside of their control, they will always seek to take care of customers and provide them with hotel accommodation and meals where required.
An easyJet spokeswoman said: “We can confirm that flight EZY6978 from Rhodes to Edinburgh on 15th August was overnight delayed due to earlier air traffic control restrictions leading to crew reaching their maximum safety regulated operating hours.
“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 hotel accommodation and meals where required and any customers that needed to source their own hotel rooms were advised they would be reimbursed along with reasonable expenses and our team is in touch with Mr Mounsey to assist with his expenses.
“Whilst this was outside of our control, we apologise for the difficulty this caused passengers and although our records show that there were ground staff available throughout the night who announced the delay at the gate and arranged accommodation for customers, we are sorry that Mr Mounsey felt let down by his experience at the airport and we are looking into this with our partners at Rhodes.”
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