Air Traffic Control Airport Misery

[LongDarkTeatime]

Is anyone else sitting at home after having their holiday cancelled today?
We haven’t had a ‘proper’ holiday in 6 years and we’re so looking forward to going away. Waited all day at the airport just to be cancelled just after the plane that was supposed to take us landed. So disappointed.
Well done to everyone who managed today with young kids. All the families around us coped so well.

Anyone due to fly out from Stansted with Jet2 in the morning and as nervous as me? Our flight leaves at 7.30am and we haven't heard anything yet. Its still showing as scheduled. I can't stop checking emails. Trying to think positive but won't feel settled until we are on the flight.

@tensmum1964

Just an opinion and very much at the risk of holding myself hostage to fortune:

By now aircraft and crews should be pretty much back on plan/on schedule post Monday's events and FWIW the weather forecast for Stansted in the AM is OK.

That doesn't mean there might not be any delays but there shouldn't really be any more jeopardy tomorrow AM for passengers outbound from the UK than there would have been if the ATC problem had not happened...

Feel very sorry for everyone caught up in this. We were in Crete last week but missed it all as we flew back on Saturday. Had been considering extending the holiday though, thankfully we didn't.

This is like the volcano in 2010 when Heathrow was closed for 9 days. I remember it well as we were also in Crete and flew to Athens for our connection to Heathrow. Landed in Athens only to be told flight was cancelled due to the volcano.

Then spent 6 more nights in Athens and Mykonos and then flew to Rome, spent 3 nights there, tried to get a train to Paris but fully booked for weeks. Finally Heathrow opened up and we got home 9 days later than planned. The original holiday was a week! Kids missed school, DH missed work. Only got partially refunded. It was a bit of an adventure but stressful and expensive!

Our neighbours flying with jet2 from stagnated

7am flight just been cancelled

I was looking forward to having their dog to dog sit!

I really hope so. 😁

*stanstead

Oh no. Where were they going?

That'll teach me..fingers crossed for you tensmum1964.

The website isn't showing any cancelled flights tomorrow. Quite a few from today being rescheduled for tomorrow unfortunately. Surely they could update their website at least. What a bloody fiasco.

Don’t know about current flights. But guessing they’re full with returning passengers.
Jet2 have started sending refund emails out but no actual refund received yet.
However they’ve only included the basic holiday cost, not the extras. Any idea if they’re supposed to refund everything?

Just dropped DS at Gatwick. Flight is delayed an hour but it is the last one out with EasyJet and that is always late. All the others on that route today were on time ...which is probably better than normal.

That’s such a disappointment you must be gutted. I booked my holiday in august just before they announced the baggage handling strike and I know how upset I was. Thankfully the strike was cancelled. Really hope you manage to do something to make up for it

We have been stuck in frankfurt since Monday, when the flights were cancelled. First available flight home Thursday, via Switzerland. Been put up in some increasingly rubbish hotels. 2 young kids with us. 1st world issues really but raaaah some people we have dealt with have been so rude. The worst bit having to go to and from the airport, knowing we are stuck, to just get booked into the same hotel we just came from.

Weeeeellll… a PP has explained it but also, some airlines aren’t being entirely honest.

DS is cabin crew, he and DH went away for a long weekend… their return flight home showed as delayed by two hours, but when he hopped onto his crewing app, it had actually been cancelled… it took them another 3 hours or so to announce the cancellation to passengers, by which time DH and DS had already rescheduled their flight and left the airport… but DS couldn’t say anything or he’d have been sacked!!

I also had a last minute delay of 4.5 hours recently… they announced the delay right at boarding time, but they knew about the delay around 3 hours before that as the captain was sick, they had no airport standby captain and the captain who was flying it was several hours away…

Some airlines are just really poor at being honest communicating with their passengers!

I think it’s the lack of communication that is the most annoying thing (next to flights being cancelled). To not know whether you’ll be able to go, to not know if you spend money if you’ll get it back, to have not a soul to ask about what is the right thing to do etc.
Air travel isn’t like a “normal” product that you buy - you’re often far from home, alternatives are hugely expensive or not available and then there’s no one to ask about it.
Like yesterday I just wanted to ask someone “will this flight definitely go ahead?” If they’d said no, fine, I’ll make other plans (train, hotel etc) but to be sitting at the airport with no idea and watching the flight get later and later and later was really annoying.
I can only imagine how I would have felt if I’d been overseas with no alternatives and no ability to spend more money to get back.

We flew back from southern Spain to Gatwick today. Boarded flight, all ready to go and then we’re told there weren’t enough staff at Gatwick and we’d be stuck on tarmac for 2 hours. The flight after ours had already been cancelled so we were fearing the worst. Miraculously pilot persevered with bringing forward our landing slot at Gatwick and in the end we left just 20 mins late and made up the time in the air. Considered ourselves very lucky indeed. This was BA.

BA staff are good at hiding had a couple of delayed flights with them and they just hid away only appearing after it was announced flights where back on. Hope you did have too long a wait.

As you’ve got AL already booked, why not book another holiday for the time you’ve got off?

I’m assuming this is exactly what happened to us.
It would have been far easier to manage if they’d told us we’d been cancelled 2 hrs earlier when I assume the decision was made. Plus I wouldn’t have spent non-refundable stuff to make a now late night flight comfortable for us.

I was reading this thread earlier while packing to come home from our holiday in Ireland. Wasn't sure we'd make it but thank God we did. We had a minor delay but ended up landing on time with BA. I was ready for a massive delay so felt quite lucky.

I would have thought everything! My dd's holiday was cancelled at 6am on Tuesday morning. We haven't received a refund yet but paid to book seats so will be pretty annoyed if they are not refunded. I'll update when we get ours through.

easyJet have said they're back to normal but increasing capacity for those still affected..

We got back from Greece yesterday. Our flights home were cancelled. Hotel had no spare rooms.
Paid for room in neighbouring hotel for the night and spent all day there without a room.
Got flight that evening to Dublin.
Stayed there for 11 hours then flew back to Heathrow.
Took nearly 3 days to get home and spent hundreds of pounds.
Hoping the travel insurance will cover all these expenses.
On The Beach TA were Not Contactable for 24 hours.
We are done in

Sounds like when they can they are switching their A321's onto at least some of the affected routes...I saw Faro, Ibiza, Dalaman and Tenerife specifically mentioned elsewhere, and it being roughly 700 extra seats..

Also been reported that Easy seem to have "found" a bit of equipment/crew capacity from somewhere (roughly one airframes worth). As a result there were two extra round trips yesterday (Palma & Faro), two today - Tenerife & Enfidha today, and an extra Rhodes tomorrow.

It's not the Berlin airlift, it won't be an instant fix but it'll be welcome news for many

That sounds awful @Cazzalou. I hope you get your money back. I bet you're relieved to be home!