Passengers complain of 'hellish' Air Transat flight from Dominican Republic
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Passengers complain of 'hellish' Air Transat flight from Dominican Republic
Good Afternoon All:
Just read this on line article from the Ottawa Citizen and it would suggest some remedial training in "effective" communications is needed here for a major IRROPS:
Published on: January 6, 2015 Last Updated: January 6, 2015 11:15 PM EST
Ottawa passengers say their 21-hour trip home from Punta Cana on Sunday was awful in all sorts of ways, not least of which involved sitting for hours on the tarmac with almost no food or water, long delays, cramped seats, sick passengers, and an unexpected landing in Montreal.
Passengers on Air Transat flight 859 say they understand mechanical glitches but compounding the indignity of their ordeal was their inability to get clear information out of the crew.
When contacted by the Citizen Tuesday morning, the airline said it was investigating the complaints. Later in the day an airline spokeswoman, Debbie Cabana, apologized on behalf of the company.
“We are sorry for this delay related to bad weather and the inconvenience for our passengers,” she said in an email statement Tuesday evening.
Cabana added that Air Transat was sending a travel credit voucher worth $250 to all the passengers on the plane. She also noted that the airline’s “bistro” menu, which offers items such as pizza, sandwiches and other foods, was available to passengers during the flight between Punta Cana and Montreal.
It’s questionable whether the apology and the voucher will assuage disgruntled passengers, some of whom are more upset about the airline’s inadequate communications than about the long delay. “I don’t think we were treated with much respect,” says Roger Biddle, a passenger who became ill during the long journey and needed medical attention. “People expect transparency in this kind of situation; they weren’t transparent with us at any time.”
The result, Biddle says, is that passengers simply did not know what was going on or the reason for the delays. Airline officials, he says, could have handled the situation much better by keeping passengers informed.
Other passengers had similar complaints, with some objecting to the notion that the airline’s “Bistro” menu option was sufficient under the circumstances.
“The suggestion that we had this available implies we should have psychically deduced we were being delayed yet another 12-plus hours,”says Ottawa teacher Jayne Taylor, who was on the flight along with her husband and their two sons, aged 17 and 20. “To feed a family of four would be a $50 thing.”
In any case, Taylor points out the food was only available from Punta Cana to Montreal. “The issue is that on the way from the Dominican Republic (back to Canada) no one could possibly anticipate we would wish we had chowed down in the middle of the damn night after the ordeal we had already endured.
“Children were asleep, the cabin was kept dark. I did have the free cookies (but) I laughed when offered a $10 stale sandwich,” she said. “We thought we would be home by breakfast.”
Taylor says the diverted and delayed trip was even worse than a takeoff she experienced where the airplane lost power and had to abort.
“I was overcome with emotion at one point and couldn’t stop crying because I was so exhausted,” she said.
Another passenger, Matthew Wood, was equally incensed. Wood had been married in Punta Cana and he, along with a wedding party of 16, was on the return flight.
His bride, Michelle, had her luggage rifled and old family jewelry worn at the wedding is gone. His 69-year-old diabetic father had a weak spell and dropped to his knees, scaring everyone. He recalls anger and frustration among passengers, and says they had trouble getting reliable information out of the crew.
The vacation, Taylor says, had been wonderful. She enjoyed the sun, the beaches, the hotel, the Dominican people.
For the trip home, about 150 passengers were due to leave Punta Cana at 11:15 p.m. Saturday, with check-in two hours earlier. When they arrived at the airport they were told a mechanical problem would delay their flight until after 2 a.m. Taylor says Air Transat offered $12 vouchers for a meal in the airport, but many passengers didn’t realize the two restaurants closed at 11 p.m. There was no food after that.
“Most people didn’t get anything to eat.”
A shuttle bus took them out to the airplane at 2:20 a.m., but was delayed because the fire department arrived. Taylor and fellow passengers, some of them standing, had to stay on the bus for 55 minutes, stressed and blasted by a “high-pitched screeching noise” that wouldn’t stop.
The reason they finally let us out was because people at the front of the bus started banging on the windows with water bottles and screaming ‘Let us out!'”
About 4:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. Ottawa time) they were told to stand on the tarmac for a few minutes, and finally allowed on the plane.
Food for the flight: Cookies and one drink, plus water.
Destination: Ottawa. Except it wasn’t.
Taylor says flight attendants spent a lot of time dodging questions, but eventually the aircraft landed in Montreal.
The announcement on the airplane said it was because Ottawa had bad weather, but by this point the storm was just as bad in Montreal.
“We knew, because we all had cellphones, that all the Air Canada flights landed in Ottawa.”
In Montreal the passengers got off, cleared customs, waited for their baggage (a further delay) and lined up for new tickets. More delays.
They got back on the same airplane. It was now mid-morning.
“They put us back on the plane at 10:40 (a.m.) and nobody had got anything to eat or drink,” Taylor said.
That’s when the crew announced a further two-hour delay. But it took much longer.
“We were on the plane in Montreal for four and a half hours, sitting on the tarmac.” Taylor says a crew member made the undiplomatic comment that this delay was hard on the crew, and people started shouting: “It’s been 18 hours! You haven’t given us anything to eat!”
During the long delay in Montreal, the cabin crew said they couldn’t get any food or even enough water. Flight attendants brought out what they could — cookies, candy, little rolls that normally go with a hot meal, even their own personal food. But it wasn’t enough to go around.
“There are about 30 children on the plane, there are diabetics, there are old people … People were passing out,” Taylor said.
Biddle and another passenger, a woman, started to show symptoms of medical
trouble. Paramedics came and spent a long time working on Biddle, who was vomiting, and the woman, who appeared to have heart trouble.
“The bathrooms — we couldn’t access either one because there were paramedics at both ends of the plane,” Taylor said. “We asked them to put on some cartoons at one point for the children. They put on Modern Family.”
Ambulances took both patients away. Then came more delay, for de-icing.
They left Montreal at 3:40 p.m. and soon reached Ottawa. Luggage appeared about 5 p.m. — soaked through from being left in the rain.
With the one-hour time change, it was some 21 hours since the passengers had left their Punta Cana hotels.
“I want to know what happened to the other (sick) passengers. I want to know why Air Transat treats us like this … I will never fly with them again,” Taylor said.
“We even said to them: We are your clients and you have people that are dehydrated here, and you’re mad at us because we’re upset?”
Taylor and Wood both said the charter company owes its passengers compensation for the hardship.
Just read this on line article from the Ottawa Citizen and it would suggest some remedial training in "effective" communications is needed here for a major IRROPS:
Published on: January 6, 2015 Last Updated: January 6, 2015 11:15 PM EST
Ottawa passengers say their 21-hour trip home from Punta Cana on Sunday was awful in all sorts of ways, not least of which involved sitting for hours on the tarmac with almost no food or water, long delays, cramped seats, sick passengers, and an unexpected landing in Montreal.
Passengers on Air Transat flight 859 say they understand mechanical glitches but compounding the indignity of their ordeal was their inability to get clear information out of the crew.
When contacted by the Citizen Tuesday morning, the airline said it was investigating the complaints. Later in the day an airline spokeswoman, Debbie Cabana, apologized on behalf of the company.
“We are sorry for this delay related to bad weather and the inconvenience for our passengers,” she said in an email statement Tuesday evening.
Cabana added that Air Transat was sending a travel credit voucher worth $250 to all the passengers on the plane. She also noted that the airline’s “bistro” menu, which offers items such as pizza, sandwiches and other foods, was available to passengers during the flight between Punta Cana and Montreal.
It’s questionable whether the apology and the voucher will assuage disgruntled passengers, some of whom are more upset about the airline’s inadequate communications than about the long delay. “I don’t think we were treated with much respect,” says Roger Biddle, a passenger who became ill during the long journey and needed medical attention. “People expect transparency in this kind of situation; they weren’t transparent with us at any time.”
The result, Biddle says, is that passengers simply did not know what was going on or the reason for the delays. Airline officials, he says, could have handled the situation much better by keeping passengers informed.
Other passengers had similar complaints, with some objecting to the notion that the airline’s “Bistro” menu option was sufficient under the circumstances.
“The suggestion that we had this available implies we should have psychically deduced we were being delayed yet another 12-plus hours,”says Ottawa teacher Jayne Taylor, who was on the flight along with her husband and their two sons, aged 17 and 20. “To feed a family of four would be a $50 thing.”
In any case, Taylor points out the food was only available from Punta Cana to Montreal. “The issue is that on the way from the Dominican Republic (back to Canada) no one could possibly anticipate we would wish we had chowed down in the middle of the damn night after the ordeal we had already endured.
“Children were asleep, the cabin was kept dark. I did have the free cookies (but) I laughed when offered a $10 stale sandwich,” she said. “We thought we would be home by breakfast.”
Taylor says the diverted and delayed trip was even worse than a takeoff she experienced where the airplane lost power and had to abort.
“I was overcome with emotion at one point and couldn’t stop crying because I was so exhausted,” she said.
Another passenger, Matthew Wood, was equally incensed. Wood had been married in Punta Cana and he, along with a wedding party of 16, was on the return flight.
His bride, Michelle, had her luggage rifled and old family jewelry worn at the wedding is gone. His 69-year-old diabetic father had a weak spell and dropped to his knees, scaring everyone. He recalls anger and frustration among passengers, and says they had trouble getting reliable information out of the crew.
The vacation, Taylor says, had been wonderful. She enjoyed the sun, the beaches, the hotel, the Dominican people.
For the trip home, about 150 passengers were due to leave Punta Cana at 11:15 p.m. Saturday, with check-in two hours earlier. When they arrived at the airport they were told a mechanical problem would delay their flight until after 2 a.m. Taylor says Air Transat offered $12 vouchers for a meal in the airport, but many passengers didn’t realize the two restaurants closed at 11 p.m. There was no food after that.
“Most people didn’t get anything to eat.”
A shuttle bus took them out to the airplane at 2:20 a.m., but was delayed because the fire department arrived. Taylor and fellow passengers, some of them standing, had to stay on the bus for 55 minutes, stressed and blasted by a “high-pitched screeching noise” that wouldn’t stop.
The reason they finally let us out was because people at the front of the bus started banging on the windows with water bottles and screaming ‘Let us out!'”
About 4:30 a.m. (3:30 a.m. Ottawa time) they were told to stand on the tarmac for a few minutes, and finally allowed on the plane.
Food for the flight: Cookies and one drink, plus water.
Destination: Ottawa. Except it wasn’t.
Taylor says flight attendants spent a lot of time dodging questions, but eventually the aircraft landed in Montreal.
The announcement on the airplane said it was because Ottawa had bad weather, but by this point the storm was just as bad in Montreal.
“We knew, because we all had cellphones, that all the Air Canada flights landed in Ottawa.”
In Montreal the passengers got off, cleared customs, waited for their baggage (a further delay) and lined up for new tickets. More delays.
They got back on the same airplane. It was now mid-morning.
“They put us back on the plane at 10:40 (a.m.) and nobody had got anything to eat or drink,” Taylor said.
That’s when the crew announced a further two-hour delay. But it took much longer.
“We were on the plane in Montreal for four and a half hours, sitting on the tarmac.” Taylor says a crew member made the undiplomatic comment that this delay was hard on the crew, and people started shouting: “It’s been 18 hours! You haven’t given us anything to eat!”
During the long delay in Montreal, the cabin crew said they couldn’t get any food or even enough water. Flight attendants brought out what they could — cookies, candy, little rolls that normally go with a hot meal, even their own personal food. But it wasn’t enough to go around.
“There are about 30 children on the plane, there are diabetics, there are old people … People were passing out,” Taylor said.
Biddle and another passenger, a woman, started to show symptoms of medical
trouble. Paramedics came and spent a long time working on Biddle, who was vomiting, and the woman, who appeared to have heart trouble.
“The bathrooms — we couldn’t access either one because there were paramedics at both ends of the plane,” Taylor said. “We asked them to put on some cartoons at one point for the children. They put on Modern Family.”
Ambulances took both patients away. Then came more delay, for de-icing.
They left Montreal at 3:40 p.m. and soon reached Ottawa. Luggage appeared about 5 p.m. — soaked through from being left in the rain.
With the one-hour time change, it was some 21 hours since the passengers had left their Punta Cana hotels.
“I want to know what happened to the other (sick) passengers. I want to know why Air Transat treats us like this … I will never fly with them again,” Taylor said.
“We even said to them: We are your clients and you have people that are dehydrated here, and you’re mad at us because we’re upset?”
Taylor and Wood both said the charter company owes its passengers compensation for the hardship.
Join Date: Jun 2004
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I had a similar experience back in 2007 with Air transat. Flew YVR to LGW for rugby world cup.
We flew on an A330-200 which just happened to have the exact same number of pax seats as the A330-300's.
My knees were rubbed raw by the seat infant of me, and I'm a short person.
So with a combination of "pan am" style seat pitch, large over weight persons beside me and unscheduled stop overs (both ways) in Calgary, I have not set foot on an Air Transat aircraft since.
And I still refuse to.
So this story is not new, and there will be another similar story next week.
aintsaying
We flew on an A330-200 which just happened to have the exact same number of pax seats as the A330-300's.
My knees were rubbed raw by the seat infant of me, and I'm a short person.
So with a combination of "pan am" style seat pitch, large over weight persons beside me and unscheduled stop overs (both ways) in Calgary, I have not set foot on an Air Transat aircraft since.
And I still refuse to.
So this story is not new, and there will be another similar story next week.
aintsaying
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Ah, the joys of discount travel! In my dotage I still fly a small corporate aircraft, I always get a chuckle when pasengers say such things as, "its much more roomy inside than {put airline name here} that we flew to Cuba in", or other references to the "cattle car" conditions common these days in the industry.Then when they find there are no waits for baggage or "take your shoes of " nonsense before bording they are indeed in heaven!
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If true , absolutely unacceptable performance by Air Transat. You only deserve to be in business by offering and delivering a product that the fare paying public will accept and appreciate. Air Transat failed in delivery , communication and even in the review of its performance. Shame on them.
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Willoman, Yes it was, the inquiry exposed lots of dirt, from an AME refusing to sign out the aircraft {over ruled by a person further up the food chain} to the Captain simply not understanding the situation about the fuel leak,{ opened the cross feed} so he finished up pumping the fuel overboard, this in spite of the F/O aparently having a better grasp of the problem,{didnt go back and view the fuel leak location with the aid of the wing lights by the way} on top of this it transpired that the captain had a drug smugling conviction in his recent past.Its worth noting that Air Canada had an identical leak prior to this incident,{ on the way to Osaka} but handled it no problem. I belive the failure was in a fuel feed to the engine due to the fact that an L1011 part was installed instead of the correct part which was modified as the result of an AD. As is so amazing in such incidents {Gimmli Glider} the media made a hero of the Captain, go figure!
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I think the company mishandled this one but hopefully will learn from it. My experiences with Air Transat have been delightful. Good customer service and for what it is, was comfortable. I don't find any carrier in Canada particularly better.
Just flew in a cramped Westjet flight, it's tight. The attendants over the years are becoming a little jaded and the jokes are annoying too.
Flew Sunwing once, and......never again!
Just flew in a cramped Westjet flight, it's tight. The attendants over the years are becoming a little jaded and the jokes are annoying too.
Flew Sunwing once, and......never again!
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Everyone will have different experiences. I flew transat to Munich direct from Vancouver a few years ago. It was one of the best flights I've been on. Great service, lots o leg room (maybe it was an anomoly) and we got there early. All in all I was happy. And it was only $700 R/T (open jaw flying home from Stanstead)
