Latest news with #BritishPassengers
Daily Mail
11-07-2025
- Daily Mail
Brits are left stranded in 'war zone' conditions for 17 hours after 'drunk' couple are caught smoking on Mexico-London flight and force plane to divert
British passengers were left stranded in 'war zone' conditions for over 17 hours after a flight was diverted due to a 'drunk' couple smoking onboard. The Gatwick-bound flight from Cancun, Mexico was forced to divert to Bangor International Airport in Maine, U.S. on July 8, where passengers were held overnight. About an hour after take-off, the captain announced that two passengers were smoking in the toilets, and that if it continued he would have to divert. After another three-and-a-half hours, they announced that the plane would now be diverting to the United States, landing at 9:28pm local time. Passengers sat in their seats for another five hours after landing, and after the smokers were taken off the plane. British passenger Terry Lawrance, 66, said it was like a 'war zone', with passengers camped out on rows of airbeds. The flight was then abandoned as the original crew were not able to continue the journey due to legal working hours. As a relief flight was dispatched from the UK to the US, the passengers stayed in a room for hours. A flight to take the passengers back to Gatwick ultimately took off at 3pm local time (8pm BST) on Wednesday, July 9, and landed safely. Videos taken by Terry show rows of beds as passengers awaited updates, whilst another video shows vehicles approaching the plane after touching down in Bangor. 'We were there for over 12 hours - it all went pear shaped. Everybody was fed up. 'In fairness, they started bringing out airbeds, but it was like free-for-all for vultures. 'It was like a warzone in a lounge - rows and rows of beds. All our luggage was still on the plane whilst we waited,' he said. Terry said: 'After an hour the captain came on and said someone had been smoking in the toilet - he read the riot act and said if it continues, we'd have to divert. 'About three hours later, around the border with Canada and he came on to let us know that the plane was being diverted to Bangor, Maine. 'Once we landed, they removed the two passengers,' he said, describing them as 'drunk'. 'The captain then said we'd be getting going again once the paperwork has been done. 'We were sat on the plane on the ground for five hours - the plane started taxing again and we thought 'great' and then they said there was a problem with flight plan, and we have to get off. 'Next thing, we're not going anywhere, and we've got to stay in this small lounge.' Passengers in Europe more broadly have been warned they can expect to face the worst ever year for delays at airports over the summers as short-staffed crews contend with surging demand for foreign travel. One senior EU official told the FT on Wednesday that after the 'worst summer ever' for delays and cancellations last year, 'this year will be very similar.' In April, Eurocontrol, the continent's air traffic control body, reported that air traffic was already up five per cent compared to the same period in 2024, with delays rising in tandem. This year, the situation is made worse by airport strikes, particularly in France, where tens of thousands of passengers have already been affected by walkouts by air traffic controllers. Eurocontrol warns that a lack of air traffic control capacity is expected to cause 'high delays' in nine countries, including France, Spain, Germany and Greece.
The Independent
11-06-2025
- The Independent
Wizz to Palma? Could be slow
Palma de Mallorca is 29C and sunny. I know this because the departure screen above gate 34 at Warsaw airport (18C, cloudy) has been saying as much for the past hour. For an hour before that, the departure screen above gate 36 delivered the same meteorological message. At around the time the plane was due to leave, though, a rumour took hold that the original gate was now history. Instead, we would venture into the bowels of the Polish capital's airport and the unloved gate 34, to await a bus transfer to the aircraft – wherever it might be. Usually I enjoy taking 'domestic' flights within the EU and wider Schengen area. British passengers are spoilt. Inflight announcements are made in everyone's second language, English, and this is also the mode for conversations between different nationalities. On arrival there is need to go through passport control, eliminating possibly an hour's wait. And you are generally flying somewhere appealing. Passenger behaviour on intra-European flights is also fascinating: not just the preponderance of passengers who stand up and start sorting out their bags as soon as the wheels touch the runway, but the selfie tendency. Many continental travellers like to document every step of the journey, fixing their hair as the breeze blows across the apron before snapping a selfie at the foot of the aircraft stairs, blissfully ignorant of the admonitions of the hi-viz wearing ground crew. And then there's the applause on arrival, which I reckon loosely correlates with a nation's inclination for religious observance. Back to that Mallorcan weather forecast. The Tuesday afternoon flight from Warsaw has an appealing schedule. It is due to arrive in Palma at 6.45pm, with a fair bit of sunshine left in the day to greet the arrivals from Poland. The 230-plus passengers anticipated drinks and tapas accompanied by the sun melting into the Mediterranean. But the way the afternoon unfolded meant even the ample evening opening hours of Spanish restaurants may have been exhausted by the time some passengers reached their resorts. 'We're sorry, your flight has been delayed,' announced the email from Wizz Air. Flight 1327 would now depart 35 minutes late. 'We know how valuable your time is and we are doing our best to avoid further delay.' Sometimes an airline's best just isn't good enough. That 35-minute window was just closing when another apologetic email arrived – saying the flight was now 65 minutes behind schedule. It appeared that the original plane rostered to operate the flight had been dispatched to Katowice in southern Poland, while a replacement had been found. Unfortunately, it was in another country: Lithuania. While Wizz Air sorted its fleet out, the numerous families with fractious toddlers were not having the best of days. Aviation is fearsomely complex. It is a miracle that millions of us can fly safely and affordably around Europe each day. Since the dawn of commercial flying, planes have been delayed for a host of reasons. But this seems to be a simple case of poor expectation management. Apologising for being a mere 35 minutes behind schedule is commendable – except when the next 'sorry' message almost doubles the delay, and the actual departure turns out to be three times as long: 105 minutes. After the plane switch, catering the new aircraft took time. With the flight well adrift of its schedule, extra delay was added waiting for an air-traffic control slot. None of this is a surprise. Under two hours sliced from the start of a fortnight's holiday in Mallorca is neither here nor there. Everyone on the flight was calm and polite (yes, even including me). People clapped – and stood up – when the plane landed. The sun was setting over the control tower when we were allowed off. I bade farewell to the kind couple who had insisted that I deserved a selfie (with the male partner) to prove I had indeed boarded the plane at Warsaw airport. The flight was safe; cheap (£50 for a three-hour, 1,200-mile journey); and effective in delivering me to Spain's most popular island. Yet passengers want to believe that their airline knows what it is doing, and that it really does 'know how valuable your time is'. Creeping delays like last night's give the impression of not caring too much. Compare the belated apology from the Wizz Air captain with the immediate response of US carrier Frontier Airlines when a flight from Buffalo to Orlando arrived 45 minutes behind schedule: a $50 voucher emailed to every passenger within minutes of touchdown. That is tangible respect for lost time. I like flying on Wizz Air. It has excellent crew and aircraft, at least as good as its bigger rivals, easyJet and Ryanair. But in future when that delay email arrives, I will take the number of minutes the airline first thought of, and treble it.
Telegraph
05-06-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
Is the end of the dreaded airport queue in sight? Not quite
Last week, British passengers arriving at Tenerife South Airport reported 'inhumane' conditions after queueing for more than two hours without access to water or loos. 'We couldn't move our arms, we could barely breathe, and people were sweating. Some parents lifted their children onto their shoulders to stop them from suffocating,' one passenger told local media. It's a frightening image, and one that has become more common at European airports since British air passengers became 'third-country nationals' after Brexit. This effectively gives us the same rights as arrivals from, say, Venezuela, banishing us to the often snail-paced 'All Passports' queue to get a stamp on arrival. When flying home we must also pass through border control to get a second exit stamp before proceeding to the gate. This can lead to scenarios where passengers are kettled at the gates with no access to refreshments if a flight is delayed, and no way to go back to the main terminal area. A new deal Change, it seems, is on the horizon. The Labour party has struck a deal with the EU to allow British passport holders to pass through e-gates, and the introduction of the Entry/Exit System (EES) in October will automate identity checks and remove the need for manual passport stamps. So will these images of British passengers snaking out of arrival halls at European airports soon be a thing of the past? Yes, but it may take a while. When it first rolls out, EES will require British (and all non-EU) travellers to provide fingerprints and facial images when entering or exiting the Schengen Area. This process has been much-delayed, not least because implementing it requires a continent-wide tech overhaul. And as we all know, airport IT systems, often operated by third-party firms and alongside multiple other systems, have a tendency to buckle at inopportune moments. If the new tech doesn't create hold-ups, the data capture process could. Pressing thumbs on sensors and having a photograph taken may sound like a simple process, but how many times have you seen somebody push their passport into the e-gate sensor the wrong way up? Such are the fears of hold-ups that airports are planning 'safety valve' procedures, where the requirement to capture everyone's data will be temporarily waived if a checkpoint gets too busy. On e-gates, I have found this new Labour/EU e-gates 'agreement' to be somewhat smoke and mirrors. The wording in the relevant document says that 'British passengers will be able to use more e-gates in Europe'. But this does not necessarily mean we will be able to use fast-track EU e-gates. Instead, it might be that we remain in the naughty ('All Passports') queue that happens to have an e-gate at the end of it. This will ultimately be up for individual countries and airports to decide. Additional hurdles Perhaps I'm being overly negative. Let's say that the EES roll-out isn't as clunky as feared, and that through some miracle the majority of European airports do kindly allow Britons to use their fast-track e-gates. Surely the airport queues will have simmered down by next summer? Maybe. But we will still face the additional border check when flying home, albeit with biometrics rather than a passport stamp. Even if e-gates are rolled out to British arrivals (as Faro Airport announced this week), we will still need to go to another booth afterwards to get our passports stamped by a human. And hold-ups like those seen in Tenerife are as much to do with poor scheduling as anything else. I checked the arrivals board on Tuesday June 2, and at 10.40am there were scheduled flights from Manchester (Jet2), Liverpool (Jet2), East Midlands (Tui) and Bournemouth (Ryanair). Ten minutes later, flights from Birmingham and Leeds (both Jet2) were scheduled to land, plus another from Paris. That's seven 180-or-so capacity flights touching onto tarmac, one after the other, in the space of ten minutes, at a single-runway, single-terminal airport. Even the sleekest, AI-powered biometric arrivals system would struggle to process all those passengers without the formation of a queue. There are some changes to the airport process that we can feel optimistic about. Soon, we'll be able to take greater quantities of liquids through security at all UK airports. A shake-up of UK flight paths promises to reduce air traffic delays before the end of the decade. And yes, all this new tech will eventually reduce friction at borders. But when you are stuck in a packed arrivals hall with a child on your shoulders and no access to water, you will be praying for progress now – not at some ambiguous point in the future.
