Thomas Cook Airlines
The delayed Ibiza and Palma flights have now made the local television news and the local paper.
It seems that some passengers may have been taken to IBZ or PMI by other means and some brought back in the same way because the local news media talk of around 250 passengers still in Bristol this afternoon and others waiting in the Balearics for transport home.
The Titan B 767 was itself delayed leaving and took off from BRS about 1830, 36 hours after the passenger should have left.
Apart from the delay itself, the main complaint from passengers seemed to be an entire lack of communication from the travel company/airline, which seems all too common in the industry. They were kept at BRS for around eleven hours on Sunday before being taken to a Bristol hotel, having been told they'd be picked up from the hotel at 10 this morning. They weren't. Eventually they were taken to BRS and should at last be approaching their holiday destinations now.
Thomas Cook has apologised for the situation which they blame on 'the impact of short term availability of crew, including sickness'.
Passengers will receive 400 euro each as compensation for the delay. This plus any further compensation under EU regulations, plus the cost of hotel accommodation and leasing of aircraft will cost the company a huge amount, and this isn't the only incident of significant delays and leased aircraft in the past few days.