Well this has never happened to me before - and I don't like it.

[Timeforatincture]

19:30 flight from Lanzarote ponced about for ages on the tarmac then threw us all off at 23:30. No offer of accommodation or any indication of time of replacement flight. At least a cafe is open (poor sod at the till) and we had a bottle of gin. You had this?

I read this as they had a room at Gatwick booked as flight was getting in late.

Been hugely delayed lots of times. Once had a 16 hour delay to get from Kerry to Gatwick - it should only have been a 1hr 20 minute flight (and there wasn’t a lot at Kerry airport but I think I bought everything they had in that time!). I could have driven home quicker.
Also made money on a delayed flight to Malaga, think it was Monarch, so didn’t mind the delay so much.

5 years ago coming back from Feb half term from Lanzarote we were lucky to get away due to massive sand clouds/storms/winds.

Another time we had to turn back part way through the journey due to a medical emergency.

Another time coming into land the pilot aborted late which was scary with the volcanoes just ahead.

I like Lanzarote, but the flying rather puts me off!

I know, and then they go on to make up all sorts of nonsense based on their misunderstanding of it all and post it as fact.

Pilots can be weirdly uninformed.

Last year I flew from Alicante to Leeds Bradford. All the passengers knew from social media etc that Leeds Bradford was shut as there was a crack on the runway and everyone was wondering what was going to happen.

Still, we took off, made our way to Leeds and eventually started our descent. Just before we landed the pilot came on the air and said he'd "just been told" the airport was shut and we were going to be diverted to Manchester. I have never understood how it took the airline to start descending before they knew what everyone else knew.

Was that really necessary

I didn't have anything more to say to you, what you would have preferred? @Vielleicht

This is true, but I remember the folks stuck in 2010 with the Icelandic volcano, and how management reacted (they weren't happy or understanding)! Also what my colleagues said about the stress etc they'd had once they got back.
Different people respond in a variety of ways, maybe give them some grace to be stressed etc? Even if you would personally respond differently.

I think a little self-awareness wouldn't go amiss. If you're on a thread where the OP is obviously quite stressed/exhausted/annoyed and repeated suggestions of how you think she should cope are going down like a cup of cold sick, it's probably best for the sake of the OP to stop posting.

This thread moved from a small domestic airport on a sunny island into Pearl Harbour quite quickly.

🤣

They've presumably been awake all night with crabby kids, and no prospect of getting back home till pretty late this evening. I think "annoying" is understating things somewhat.

How did you track each other down?

Glad to know you can focus on me and insult me with a passive-aggressive post instead of answering the OP.

That wasn't passive aggressive, the meaning was directly clear 😆

The Eastern Atlantic isn't as benign as you might think. All the main airports on the Canaries have the potential to have operations messed up when the wind blows. Madeira is even more susceptible.

At a little over 2000m Lanzarote's runway is nor over long. If the wind isn't right to take off towards the mountains NE of aerodrome at the aircraft's weight (looks like it's an older A321 with IAE engines) it won't go. I suspect options would have been considered to reduce the weight including leaving your bags behind.

Don't forget that they have to plan for what happens if one engine fails after the V1 speed beyond which there's no longer room to stop on the remaining length.

I guess the crew are now out of hours which accounts for the further delay.

None of that justifies not finding you accommodation and food and providing facilities to wash. I doubt BA, in either it's mainline or Gatwick operations actually have staff at Arrecife and local handlers have only limited authority.

Press your claim vigorously upon return to the UK!!!

I think a little self-awareness wouldn't go amiss. If you're on a thread where the OP is obviously quite stressed/exhausted/annoyed and repeated suggestions of how you think she should cope are going down like a cup of cold sick, it's probably best for the sake of the OP to stop posting.

Quite

I have never understood how it took the airline to start descending before they knew what everyone else knew

They did know. They just don't tell you til last minute so people don't go nuts at airport/when boarding.

Also, sometimes the situation can change/problem be fixed mid flight and they can make the original landing.

I think when they say there’s too much weight on board what they mean is a discrepancy between the expected weight of luggage and expected passengers. They have to investigate this in case someone has loaded an extra item potentially carrying a bomb. Airlines don’t delay flights for fun, it costs them a fortune. Safety, yours and the crews is paramount and there are set procedures in place that they have no choice about.

Agh this sounds awful.

you WILL get home. Tonight you will be in your own beds resting.

the airline and airport want you to go and will be doing everything they can to get you on your way.

Once in Greece a sudden storm meant our flight home was delayed. We sat in boarding for hours until the airport said the flight was cancelled and we had to leave the airport. No accommodation help, nothing. We managed to find a hotel that would have us at 3am and were called at 7am to be told our new flight was in 2 hours … when we got to the airport it was delayed again. Never been so stressed in my life.

Ryanair did give us a free ham and cheese baguette in the end.

and we got home in the end!

FWIW I don't think OP and @Glittertwins are being remotely demanding or dramatic. They seem to be quite stoic and behaving pretty reasonably and proportionately to me. I could tell you some stories about dramatic passenger demands.

Agree.

Also could tell many a story - ex holiday rep!!!! Luckily communication back then was better for missed flights and passengers were treated better on delays - but I thinks that's because we had so many more in resort reps.

But my favourite (worst!) was the last who'd been diverted with 1000's of others due to 9/11 who was more interested in who was going to pay for the clean thing she needed to buy.

It took all my strength not to react to that one.

Yes, I have had exactly the same with EasyJet and am about to start the CAA dispute for British Airways too. Will also make a small claims court application.

EasyJet settled just before the hearing, so I will expect another 12 months of lies and crap from BA too.

Or, oh I don’t know, but just maybe they don’t always share absolutely everything with the paying public.🤐

I can promise you the reality is they don’t, the trick these days, especially in view of SM, is what to say and when.

In the case you describe in the paper work for the flight that the pilots had access to, and/or in comms with their operations, the flight crew may well have had info about the work in progress, and even an estimate of runway opening time which may led to the belief that the flight could arrive normally..(but as always they’ll have had a diversion plan of sorts up their sleeves).

The question really is did the flight crew actually need say anything from the outset about the chances of a diversion, and was what was said at the time appropriate.

No, that’s a not what they mean. It’s to do with physics and flight paths, a poster with great technical knowledge (a pilot or engineer I’d guess) explained it well earlier in the thread.

I mean, issues with bags not linked to a passenger are indeed a thing- a very serious thing- but they are not detected or explained in terms of weight.

I was raised in Leeds, am a plane nut of 50+years standing and follow activity at the airport closely. I was aware of the hole pretty much as soon as it happened.

Knowledge of the issue with Leeds runway would have been available to the airline and should have been passed on to the crew. No excuse for not briefing passengers after boarding that there were problems and they may end up an MAN or EMA.

On the other hand they may have expected the issue to be resolved or on the cusp of being resolved and not found out it was ongoing until they tuned the LBA information on the radio.

MN is no longer a place where you can get support - there are always people trying their best to look for any reason why this is the op's own fault or to sneer.

And it's tiresome. Mind you, people that do this obviously lack something in their own lives.

We were delayed leaving Gatwick for a cheap package holiday once. In fairness they did put us in a hotel.

The compensation would have been more than the holiday (Greek island, term time, so a long way and very cheap) but the airline went bankrupt after we got home!