Originally Posted by
DOBEYPETE
the airline should have chartered a replacement aircraft, BA manages to do so
Ah well, should have gone BA then. More expensive ? You bet. And to go BA from Manchester to Antalya wold involve a connection through Gatwick. Longer journey outwards, on the return they get back to Gatwick long after the last Manchester leaves, so you're in for a hotel or sat up in the lounge all night. Costs a good chunk more as well. Price it up if you don't believe me. Still feel that's the way to go ?
Accounts of there being no spare planes are somewhat correct. There are, but nowadays instead of each airline having their own they tend to charter in from a small number of specialists (for some reason the Portugese have developed a niche here) if/when required. This costs a bomb of course, plus considerable costs of getting the standby over to Antalya in the first place, and for many carriers this just cannot be justified until they are getting into real hot water with reaccommodating large numbers of people. And, believe it or not, even BA don't do this in many cases. They give you a hotel voucher and tell you to come back tomorrow. To me that's often the most reasonable thing to do in the situation. Aviation does not work without mechanical problems, although the vast majority of issues are sorted out by the professionals who write on here without you ever knowing about it.