Why was MYT270 7 Hours Late 27/5?

[Land After]

If there's anyone from My Travel reading this that can explain why my return flight from ACE to MAN managed to be delayed by 7 Hours, I'd love to know. No-one on the ground seemed to have any idea of the cause other than "technical problems". I don't want to get mad or even, I'd just like to know the sequence of events that casued me to miss a night's sleep.

Just once in a blue moon I take a charter and then.......

As an aside, if anyone else happens to get stuck in in Lanzerote, it's not such a bad place to be - new terminal and plenty of seating :) And to be fair, the My Travel reps did their best to keep people informed of the continuing delays, fed and amused by running a trip to the local shopping mall :rolleyes:

[World Traveller]

Yesterday (Wed 29/5) 0900 flight Birmingham to Zakynthos was "retimed" to 0125 Thursday morning; with a similar "retiming" for the arrival.

At the weekend one of the 767's operating Brum to Toronto (MYT096 I think) went tech, and that op'd about 7 hours late also. Not a good week for My Travel!

WT
<just a punter>

[Landing_24R]

Britannia haven't had a very good week either out of MAN, not quite as bad as the two above examples, but there was a 4 hour delay MAN-VCE on Friday...

The preceding flight from Mahon was meant to be operating the VCE flight on arrival back at MAN. However. the Mahon aircraft was late inbound, as the (BY) 757 meant to operate it had gone tech earlier that morning at MAN, replaced by an Air Scandic A300 (for the entire sector). For some reason BY weren't too keen on sending this to VCE upon it's arrival back at MAN, so they decided to wait for another inbound (BY) 757 from Zakynthos, which landed about an hour later. That coupled with a slightly longer turnaround than usual resulted in a 4 hour outbound delay.

Confused?

It just shows how these things can accumalate and build up into one hell of a delay. The aircraft picked up an extra 30 minutes delay, and finally arrived back at MAN from VCE 4h 35 minutes late and no doubt with some very grumpy passengers. Believe me, Venice Marco Polo Airport is NOT the place to be if you are going to have a mega delay.

Mind you, all this is lightweight compared to 7 hours.

Landing_24R :rolleyes:

[rentaghost]

Land After -

ACE had fire service strikes last week which may have caused the problem!

MYT had to operate a couple of flights late as they could not get a guarantee from the Airport that the fire service would be available when the inbound flights were due to land.

[Land After]

rentaghost - No, the probem was billed as a tech fault which lead to a wholesale rescheduling of the MYT operations for the day. My guess is that the aging and creaking DC10 that eventually got us home picked up an additional delay during the days flying.

Binter & Air 2K managed to fly to schedule, so I suspect the fire strikes were on another day.

:mad: And another thing! Why do MYT have to cram in 10 abreast seating on their DC10? Normal schedule is 9 (or 8 if lucky). I was literally jammed into a bulkhead seat due to the tray table in the arm santching another couple of inches of rump space.:mad:

[AOG007]

Land After

The way you have approached this matter would suggest to me that you are regular air traveller. Albeit, usually with a half decent scheduled operator. So when you travel on your cheap package holiday, you should appreciate that the charterers are not charging the high prices that a scheduled carrier charges.

If you are not a regular traveller, then here is a quite simple explanation as to why MYT would have 10 abreast, as opposed to 8/9.

1) You have paid peanuts for a holiday
2) Only a percentage of the total holiday price goes to the charter airline
3) Charter airlines don't sell seats at different prices. Each one is the same, as oppossed to first, club, fully flexible, restricited tickets, etc......

To ensure the charter airlines make money they have to have greater utilisation of their main asset, than that of a schedule airline. Again due to the fact that the fares they charge are a damn sight cheaper than that of a schedule, and as a result, so is the standard of comfort. Unless you are a midget, you will be uncomfortable.

So, whats the answer. Use a schedule airline for any flight over 2-2.5hrs in duration. And also expect longer delays than a schedule carrier, because they just don't have the downtime built into their schedules.

[iwoolle]

AOG007

This is just to say that not all charter carriers offer poor service. I flew on 24APR FRA/HER on HF3431 (Hapag Lloyd). This flight was boarded on time but then developed a mech. problem. We sat on the airplane for an hour and then were told that it required major work and that replacement a/c was being sent from HAM and that we could expect to depart on the new a/c in approx three hours.

As we left the cancelled a/c we were given vouchers for snacks/drinks and told to watch the monitors for new boarding info. The time passed pretty fast (a few drinks and good company helped) and we were boarded on the replacement a/c.
Great inflight crew, plenty of legroom (ok I am not a tall person)great service and what appeared to be a very new airplane. The level of inflight service was above that of many so called full service airlines.

And by the way, I did pay peanuts €900.00 for two weeks all inclusive.

When it comes to long delays, good customer service can turn a bad situation into a PR win for the carrier.

Nice one Hapag Lloyd :)