akindofmagic
24th Jul 2006, 13:31
Found this while on the Newcastle United unofficial fan site www.nufc.com (http://www.nufc.com)
Torp-edoed
The 09.25 flight from Oslo Torp to Newcastle will now be departing.....for somewhere else.
That was the situation that led to over 100 Newcastle fans returning from Norway being left in the lurch by low-cost airline Ryanair - now rechristened Lying Air by all and sundry.
All seemed fine until moments before boarding was due to commence, with the plane having landed from its inbound leg and passengers having disembarked.
At that point though, an alleged technical problem with the plane saw the flight delayed for an unspecified time.
Danger signs were evident at that point when an announcement was made offering passengers the chance to rebook on the same flight to Newcastle - 24 hours later.
However, the staff in the departure lounge continued to assure anyone who asked that the flight would still be leaving for Newcastle at some point that day (Sunday).
That delay though became a cancellation later on Sunday morning, despite the flight alleged to be bringing an engineer not having taken off from England at that point. Lying Air again.
At that point it became every man (and woman) for themselves, with a mad scramble to the Ryanair information desk, where two hard-pressed staff members did their best to rebook passengers on flights to other destinations.
As a result Newcastle fans were scattered across the UK and Europe, as spare seats on any Ryanair flight out of Torp were quickly snapped up.
Some fans then found themselves on flights to Glasgow, Liverpool, Stansted and Frankfurt - rebooked free but then left to fend for themselves to get back home - incurring flight, bus, train, taxi, car hire and hotel fees - plus of course the massive inconvenience of being hours late and dumped miles from their intended destination.
The lucky ones were away within a few hours, but many others were faced with an extra night in Norway or a mad dash to other airports to try and grab seats home with other airlines.
That mean forking out sums of £150 and upwards, not including internal travel in Norway (more than the flight price for some who resorted to prohibitively-priced taxis)
To add further insult, some of those fans rebooked with Ryanair then found themselves travelling back on the actual plane that had been due to fly to Newcastle - miraculously airworthy again, now that it was required to fly somewhere other than Tyneside.
Given the confusion, conflicting information and evidence of our own eyes, our initial conclusion is that the airline simply pulled their Oslo to Newcastle flight for their own convenience and invented a spurious problem to relieve themselves of any responsibility to the stranded passengers.
Ryanair's position in all of this is that they bear no responsibility - we're trying to contact someone there now to speak to about their disgraceful conduct in all of this - more to follow.
ends
Sadly, this type of conduct seems like par for the course now. How long are people going to put up with this sort of half-arsed customer non-service? It's nothing short of a disgrace.
Torp-edoed
The 09.25 flight from Oslo Torp to Newcastle will now be departing.....for somewhere else.
That was the situation that led to over 100 Newcastle fans returning from Norway being left in the lurch by low-cost airline Ryanair - now rechristened Lying Air by all and sundry.
All seemed fine until moments before boarding was due to commence, with the plane having landed from its inbound leg and passengers having disembarked.
At that point though, an alleged technical problem with the plane saw the flight delayed for an unspecified time.
Danger signs were evident at that point when an announcement was made offering passengers the chance to rebook on the same flight to Newcastle - 24 hours later.
However, the staff in the departure lounge continued to assure anyone who asked that the flight would still be leaving for Newcastle at some point that day (Sunday).
That delay though became a cancellation later on Sunday morning, despite the flight alleged to be bringing an engineer not having taken off from England at that point. Lying Air again.
At that point it became every man (and woman) for themselves, with a mad scramble to the Ryanair information desk, where two hard-pressed staff members did their best to rebook passengers on flights to other destinations.
As a result Newcastle fans were scattered across the UK and Europe, as spare seats on any Ryanair flight out of Torp were quickly snapped up.
Some fans then found themselves on flights to Glasgow, Liverpool, Stansted and Frankfurt - rebooked free but then left to fend for themselves to get back home - incurring flight, bus, train, taxi, car hire and hotel fees - plus of course the massive inconvenience of being hours late and dumped miles from their intended destination.
The lucky ones were away within a few hours, but many others were faced with an extra night in Norway or a mad dash to other airports to try and grab seats home with other airlines.
That mean forking out sums of £150 and upwards, not including internal travel in Norway (more than the flight price for some who resorted to prohibitively-priced taxis)
To add further insult, some of those fans rebooked with Ryanair then found themselves travelling back on the actual plane that had been due to fly to Newcastle - miraculously airworthy again, now that it was required to fly somewhere other than Tyneside.
Given the confusion, conflicting information and evidence of our own eyes, our initial conclusion is that the airline simply pulled their Oslo to Newcastle flight for their own convenience and invented a spurious problem to relieve themselves of any responsibility to the stranded passengers.
Ryanair's position in all of this is that they bear no responsibility - we're trying to contact someone there now to speak to about their disgraceful conduct in all of this - more to follow.
ends
Sadly, this type of conduct seems like par for the course now. How long are people going to put up with this sort of half-arsed customer non-service? It's nothing short of a disgrace.