British Airways passengers sleep at Venice airport

[H Azmal 0]

Http://m.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-22717377

 

 

British Airways has apologised after about 140 UK-bound passengers spent the night at a Venice airport because cabin crew had worked their maximum hours.

 

They slept on the floor of Marco Polo Airport without food and drink after their flight to London Gatwick left with no passengers on board.BA said it could not find hotel rooms for passengers or the cabin crew.It said the passengers, who have now boarded a replacement aircraft back to London, would be given compensation.

 

.'Locked up'

 

Wednesday's flight had been due to take off shortly after 22:30 (20:30 GMT) but was delayed owing to a technical fault.

 

This meant the crew had already worked their maximum hours for the day, even though the pilots were able to fly the plane back to London.The passengers, including a number of children, spent the night at the airport - with some suggesting that staff locked the doors and locked up their luggage.

 

Kat Davis, from Hemel Hempstead, was at the airport for 14 hours."It was a ghost town," she told BBC London radio."They locked up the airport. They told us just before the staff left that the airport was locked and we couldn't leave."Our bags were all locked up. There were people who had medication in bags and they couldn't get to it. There was a young family who couldn't get to children's stuff in a suitcase as well."Passengers say they have had no contact from the airline.

 

'Safety of customers'

 

In a statement, BA said: "We're very sorry for the disruption faced by our customers and will work with them to provide compensation. We always do everything we can to avoid an overnight flight delay, but when this happens we offer hotel accommodation to those travelling with us.

 

"Unfortunately, due to the volume of visitors to Venice we could not secure any rooms for our customers or cabin crew."

 

The aircraft due to operate the flight to Gatwick was delayed into Venice because of a technical fault earlier in the day. Unfortunately this meant that the cabin crew responsible for the safety of our customers had exceeded their available working hours, and were unable to operate the flight back to London. The two pilots were still within their hours and returned the aircraft to London.

 

"We have sent a replacement aircraft to Venice this morning to carry those affected customers back to Gatwick."EU regulations oblige airlines to pay compensation to passengers for certain cancellations and delays.

 

Last week a BA plane bound for Oslo turned back to Heathrow and made an emergency landing after black smoke was seen coming from one of its engines.Both runways were closed during the incident and short-haul flights were cancelled by the airline for several hours.

[Alvin Sim 0]

what does it mean by the cabin crew has already worked their maximum hours?

[alberttky 0]

Both flight deck and cabin crew have maximum stipulated working hours which they can only work so much (AKA Flight Time Limitation - FTL). After which they must rest for X amount of hours before they're allowed to work again.

Edited May 30, 2013 by alberttky

[Alvin Sim 0]

i see...thanks for the explanation

[H C Chai 4]

Oh dear, I feel sorry for those stranded passengers! This is one bad publicity for BA. To be honest I personally have experienced more delays on BA flights compared to the LCC's such as Easyjet and Ryanair. When you read news like this it does make you wonder why bother choosing a legacy airline over a LCC, especially on a short hop...

[BC Tam 2]

We were stranded at AUH for 17 hours last year due to crew FTL - with hindsight, funny how things snowballed early that morning

Flight was initailly delayed due to fog closing up the runway

Then when we were at threshold waiting to buzz off, someone landed and did some damage to the runway lights - took like an hour for them to decide it's bad and get the aircraft towed back to terminal

By which time fog had again closed everything up and AUH very quickly filled up with fellow refugees. Also quickly noted many Arabs do not tolerate flight delays very well, judging from the many very audible and animated 'discussions' that developed

With so many flights delayed during what I believe was peak departures for long haul flights, it must have been quite a nightmare for EK to have to assemble so many sets of replacement crew, which I suppose must have contributed to the cumulative delay. It was very frustrating seeing the aircraft abandoned at the gate but no one available to fly us out

Edited June 1, 2013 by BC Tam

[BC Tam 2]

.... it must have been quite a nightmare for EK

Beg pardon, that should read EY instead