29 August 2023 , 21:35
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Brits face being left heavily out of pocket due to the air travel fiasco.
Many are paying for new flights and hotels and could be denied compensation, and many have told how they have been left stranded abroad with no support, amid warnings the air travel chaos could go on for days. Thousands face being left out of pocket as they may not be entitled to compensation for ruined summer breaks.
Many stuck in foreign countries will have to fork out for extra nights in hotels and food. As the mayhem was caused by an air traffic control IT meltdown, airlines are not obliged to repay passengers for cancelled flights. They are instead offered another one, but some trapped tourists have been told none are available until at least this weekend meaning they could miss work or the new school term. Holidaymakers have also said they are struggling to contact airlines and feel they have been abandoned.
At least 281 flights were cancelled yesterday at the UK’s busiest airports. Many other were significantly delayed. Kelly Hagerty and her family, from Aberbargoed, South Wales, were due to fly back on Monday after a 10-day holiday to the Canary Islands but their flight was cancelled.
Fed-up passengers wait at Amsterdam Schiphol yesterday (PA)They cannot get another until September 9. Kelly said: “We are talking a £1,000 for each family to stay in another hotel. We’ve basically been left stranded, to crack on and sort it ourselves. We’ve got work, jobs to go to and school. Some of the children will be starting their first day in secondary school. It’s a shambles.”
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Uel and Rachel O’Neill had to shell out for flights this Sunday to get back from Majorca to Belfast with children Tilly, seven, Sam, eight, and James, five, after theirs was cancelled yesterday. Uel, 48, said: ‘I’ve had to spend another £4,000 on a new flight to get back and it’s also going to cost me for the hotel for another five nights “The kids are all going to miss their first week back at school.”
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Company director Andy Bolton, 42, from Tarleton, Lancs, was last night stuck in Palma, Majorca, with wife Sandra, 38, and children Lucie May, seven and five-year-old Jagger. He said: “We boarded the plane at 11.20am yesterday and we were sat on it without moving for seven hours with a five-year-old and a seven-year old. We got a glass of water each which we didn’t have to pay for.
“But we had to buy food and drinks and they were running out of food and juice for the kids. By the time they got to my aisle there wasn’t much left. There were lots of kids on board, a pregnant woman and a woman with a baby on her knee for seven hours.” Passengers were then told the Jet2 crew would be out of hours if the flight was delayed further.
Andy, Sandra, Lucie May and Jagger give sign (SOLARPIX.COM)Andy added: “That’s when they kicked us off the plane. They told us a transfer would take us to a hotel and bring us back the next day for our flight. Then we were told we had to get our own hotel and transfer because Jet2 couldn’t get a hotel for all of us.” Katrina Harrison and her family, including twin grandchildren aged one, spent the night at Leeds Bradford Airport after their flight to Antalya, Turkey, was cancelled on Monday afternoon.
The gran, from Stockton-on-Tees, Co Durham, said: “There were no hotels, we couldn’t get the car out of the car park. We haven’t slept, we tried on the floor but couldn’t. Luckily the children could sleep in the pram. The holiday was supposed to be a family celebration of a few things.
“We’ve spent £12,000 on it and we’ve been treated like muck.” Ryan and Kirsty Fawcett, from Selby, North Yorks, were at East Midlands Airport with two-year-old twin sons for their first family holiday to Antalya, Turkey. Their flight on Monday was cancelled, and after staying in a hotel overnight, they were booked on another departure yesterday morning that was also axed.
Kirsty said: “What has annoyed us more is we have been told ‘just sit and wait around’, with the extra expense of hotels. What if we didn’t have money spare?” A group of around 40 British athletes and staff were stranded in Hungary after Budapest’s World Championships. Some chose to travel directly to Zurich for tomorrow’s Diamond League event.
Traveller sleeps on floor of Stansted airport (AFP via Getty Images)While duty of care rules mean passengers should get what they fork out on extra hotel nights and new flights back, in reality it can end up being a struggle. Which? Travel editor Rory Boland said: “Already we’re seeing worrying reports of passengers being left stranded without support, and airlines failing to properly communicate with their passengers or fulfil their legal obligations such as offering timely rerouting or providing overnight accommodation.”
Consumer champion Martyn James added: “Airlines need to accept that when people haven’t been able to contact them, which is what we’re seeing all the time at the moment, they shouldn’t dispute a claim and should just pay up.” EasyJet last night announced it was laying on extra flights to get passengers stranded across Europe home and will reimburse customers paying for a hotel or travel while away.
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Bosses also said the airline was back to operating normally. Yesterday’s cancellations added to the 790 departures and 785 arrivals axed on Monday. Transport Secretary Mark Harper admitted it could take “some days” to get back to normal. An initial investigation last night revealed Monday’s meltdown came as a result of “flight data received by National Air Traffic Control Services”. But it ruled out a cyber attack.
Chief executive Martin Rolfe said that means both primary and back-up systems responded by suspending automatic processing “to isolate the problem and prioritise continued safe air traffic control”. A full report to Mr Harper is expected “within days, not weeks”. Officials have not ruled out the possibility of an incorrectly filed flight plan by a French airline.
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“System’s down,” said one, ignoring the queue snaking out of the hall and pointing to a redundant computer. Soon after, we sat buckled up on our flight. “Just waiting for a few stragglers,” said the pilot cheerily.
“It’s a bit chaotic, you might have seen.” More than five hours passed and we did not move. The pilot was now less chipper. Closing the skies on the last summer bank holiday has that effect. Experience tells you what comes next. Nothing. You are left entirely to your own devices.
I jumped in a cab into town whilst my daughter, on the phone, plotted the shortest route to the French TGV rail network. We opted for the 550-mile overnighter to Stuttgart, taking in Slovakia, Austria and Germany. It seemed a sound plan until I was turfed out in Salzburg at 3.15am, told heavy rain had made the line too dangerous.
Take this voucher to one of these nearby hotels, they said. They were all full, apart from one. And that wanted €200 (£172) for the four hours that still remained of the night. Up ahead, we’d booked a TGV to Paris and a connecting service to Lille where my wife and daughter would drive, via ferry, to retrieve me as there was no availability on the French side.
Stuck in Mozart’s hometown mean tall those tickets would be lost.Worse still, easyJet had, finally,updated their app. Our flight would leave Budapest at 10am. I could have cried. Then I heard it, a local train, bound for Munich, in time to connect to Stuttgart and catch up with our itinerary. It was a stroke of luck. Perhaps we’d earned it.
System built with safeguards
The system fault that led to travel chaos was not necessarily down to human error, according to a retired air traffic controller. The man, who worked on Heathrow Airport’s inbound flights and does not want to be named, said air traffic controllers rely on a “strip system” to keep moving aircraft at a safe distance from each other.
But the computer system that calculates the strips has checks in place to prevent mistakes. He added: “NATS [formerly the National Air Traffic Services] has huge computers with lots of back-ups. That is the only way they can provide safety in the system. If, as has been suggested, an airline accidentally inputted the wrong information, the system would,“just say ‘go away and put it in properly’”.
The former air traffic controller added: “For every aircraft’s movement, the pilot puts in their flight plan, the flight plan gets put into the computer.“ Then it produces strips, which go in front of the controller who’s going to control the aircraft travelling through the airspace.“
All the separation [of aircraft in mid-air] is done using those strips. “What’s happened as far as I can see is there’s been a glitch in the computer somewhere and those strips have not been produced. The system has to stop somehow, and so the only way they can do that is either to say no aircraft coming into the airspace, or no takeoffs, no landings and so on.” During a system outage, controllers must reduce the workload quickly. He said that “otherwise it becomes dodgy”.