Originally Posted by
hoistop
Does anyone know what was the original fu....up in this story, that caused passengers to disembark and had to come back next day for another try? If my holiday is shortened for two days for some organizational crap/money saving meaasure ... I would be VERY angry! And why the co-pilot had to go and help the handlers? Such crap service sheds bad impression not only to specific airline (guilty or not), but to entire aviation industry, as any reasonable man would consider it as totally unreliable means of transport. We all lose with such events.
Whenever I heard that my airline told passengers that flight was delayed due to "technical reasons" when airplane was technically OK (did happen with some dispatchers/crews) I went bezerk as I felt it is very unfair to offload it to maintenence (which I was part of) when true reason was much more intricate and truth was concealed from passengers. Any passenger would consider "technical reasons" as an aircraft maintenance issue. And "operational reasons" can mean almost anything. If I am in MAN on this flight, I would demand an honest explanation why and what really happened.
Original flight was on a leased B757 (some Spanish company). Passengers all boarded about 07:45 and due to go at 07:55. At 11:00 baggage hadn't been loaded so captain said they needed to be somewhere else, and asked everybody to get off. Chaos as nobody from TUI there to meet the passengers. Passengers eventually notified of cancellation by text, and told to collect bags. Bags didn't arrive for a further 3 hours.
Flight re-arranged for 13:15 the following day, this time on a B737-800. Fewer seats, so TUI just notified people that had bought "flight only" that their flights were cancelled again. Flight eventually left about 16:15, with at least 15 empty seats.