Ten-hour wait for air passengers

Aug 30 2008 by Hilary Clixby, The Journal

FRUSTRATED passengers were left waiting for more than 10 hours in Newcastle airport for their flight — because staff could not print off the flight plan.

Hundreds of North East holiday makers booked on Monarch flight 325 to Cancun, Mexico, became increasingly agitated after they were left sitting in the departure lounge.

Some passengers had arrived at the airport at 4am on Friday, ready for the flight scheduled to depart at 7am.

Tantalisingly the departure screen told customers at 7am that they would be boarding in three minutes – and then stayed like that for the next six hours.

Careworker Susan Collins, from South Beach, Blyth, was going on holiday with husband Tom and friends Pam and Dave Hurst. She said that phoning The Journal was their “last hope” because no-one had told them what was going on.

Susan said: “That’s a long three minutes – the same screen has been on the whole time.

“It’s very frustrating. It sounds like they’re spinning us a yarn. I’ve spoken to customer service and the people at the gates and they’ve given us £6 vouchers.

“We’ve paid all this money. I’d like more information – stop hiding and be honest – and to get to where I’m supposed to be going. A lot of people are getting upset.”

Monarch Holidays said a computer failure meant they were unable to print out or access information about the flight plan, passengers or weather conditions, and were unable to take off without them.

A spokeswoman said: “Unfortunately there was a system failure so they couldn’t print it off. I presume they would have spoken to them [the passengers] but they couldn’t give them an exact departure time.

“We had 10 passengers on the flight who had then gone airside, and our representative can’t go through.”

The flight eventually took off at 2.15pm, seven and a quarter hours late. The spokeswoman added there would be no compensation for a delay of that length.