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OK, so the strike itself has nothing to do with Airtours. It's the way they handled it that is the problem. There was a very noticable lack of information, with my friends and I having to chase Reps for any titbit of news we could find. The queue at their Information Desk got so long at ... Read review
A review by Dizz on Airtours International - AIH July 1st, 2001
Author's product rating:
Food Quality
Poor
Customer Service
Unhelpful
Punctuality
Poor
Space
Fairly Comfortable
Value for Money
Poor
Advantages:
Usually pretty cheap (though not on this occasion)
Disadvantages:
I don't know where to begin today - ask me tomorrow I might be kinder when I have calmed down !
Recommend to potential buyers:
no
Full review
I've been away from Ciao for a while - just got back from holiday (which, unfortunately was a little longer than I expected).
You may have seen it in the papers, or watched it on the news - well, hell - I've experienced it! I'm talking about the current Coach strike in the Balearics causing utter chaos for air passengers travelling to and from the Islands.
If you don't know what I am talking about; this is the situation. When you buy a package holiday you get off the plane and get carted off to your hotel by coach - well, that wasn't happening this weekend as all the Coach drivers were on strike. Therefore, all arrivals at the airport were stranded and there was a huge build up of people at the airport (we're talking thousands, here...) Queues for taxis were a mile long (literally) with some people waiting for taxis for 20 hours.
Because of the huge build up of people, the airport decided not to let any more flights in to the terminal. So all the passengers who were supposed to be flying home were stranded, as their planes were not arriving to take them home.
Unfortunately, we knew nothing about this as we were travelling independently and did not have a Representative to warn us of the impending doom.
OK, so the strike itself has nothing to do with Airtours. It's the way they handled it that is the problem. There was a very noticable lack of information, with my friends and I having to chase Reps for any titbit of news we could find. The queue at their Information Desk got so long at one point that they decided to close it for a while (very helpful). During our 29 hour delay we queued up at their information desk on several occasions - I really do think they could have been decent enough to make announcements every so often and keep us updated on the situation.
And then there was the problem with the refreshments.
Damn them - they had advance warning this was going to happen so they should have made proper preparation for it. If we had known we were going to be stuck in the airport for 29hrs then we sure as hell would have brought supplies with us.
Mahon airport is not equipped to deal with thousands of stranded people. In the departure lounge there is one cafe and one small restaurant. The cafe only sells very basic snacks such as chocolate, crisps, cardboard sandwiches and stale baguettes at an over inflated price. The restaurant could not cope either and would close every few hours even when it was only a quarter-full. (You can imagine the queues..........)
Airtours should have been aware of this and been more on the ball with providing; at the very least; water for us. The airport was crammed full of people, it must have been 28 degrees outside at least and the air conditioning was not having as much of an effect as it should have. Other airlines were handing out water much earlier than Airtours.
After being stranded for 10 hours, at midnight they announced they were going to feed us. We queued up for our little packages which contained a drink, crisps, chocolate bar and a stodgy stale baguette, containing either cheese or rubber salami. Marvellous. One drink after 10 hours in a stinking hot airport.
Anyway, we then settled down to the floor for the night. At 8am, they annouced again they would feed us. Once again the little packages contained a drink, chocolate, a sticky doughnut thing and another stale baguette containing either cheese or rubber salami. MMmmmm...delicious (not)!
By lunchtime the next day we were getting pretty hungry for some proper food (by this time we had been there neary 24hrs). The cafe only served the same dry, stale baguettes with cheese or salami and we were pretty sick of those by now. On enquiring at the information desk they said they were trying to sort some better food out "but you must appreciate how difficult it is with the number of people we are dealing with". Still, I managed to get some water out of them as by this time there was none left in the vending machines and none in the cafe - though I did have to beg for it; and even then she only gave me 3 250ml bottles, which is pretty pathetic for a party of six people.
Anyway, a few hours later we managed to get into the restaurant and got some hot food (pretty appalling but welcome just the same). Unfortunately, by this time Airtours had started handing out hot food too - I wasn't hungry any more but I was so angry I thought "I'm gonna eat the bloody thing anyway!" Luckily for me I had eaten, as it turned out to be yet more stodgy stale sandwiches and baguettes, only this time with toasted cheese and ham on them - more like a pizza. YUK!!
Looking around the airport I could see other airlines handing out little packaged meals on trays (just like the ones you get on the plane) which would have been a lot more welcome but Airtours obviously could not cope with that.
By 7pm we were on the plane and ready to fly home. It was a German plane with a German crew, one of their sister companies I think; called FTi. Well, I must say - hats off to the cabin crew - they were the best ever. Really friendly and joking with us and they spoke excellent English. Unfortunately we were not offered any alcoholic drinks, which I really could have done with as I hate flying...!! But their service was good, nonetheless.
A day and a half late, having had to cancel my gig for last night (which I was not happy about) we got home.
All the time we were at the airport, the other airlines were managing to get people home. Albeit, they had to wait - but JMC in particular was sending flights back to the UK - whilst Airtours flights were not happening.
Since the problem was that they didn't want to bring any more people into the airport we failed to see why they couldn't fly out empty planes to take us home - is it simply a matter of money? Obviously it would cost them to send out empty planes but that would have alleviated the situation a lot more quickly.
Anyway, I'm home now and I've ranted a bit but I'm still angry as I only got back last night!!
If you've managed to get this far, then thanks for reading!
P.S. I've just seen an interview on Sky News with some of the passengers travelling with Airtours who are stranded at Glasgow airport and they were pretty scathing about the lack of information, too!
Advantages: Good value for money Disadvantages: Risk of not being seated next to each other
...of a packaged holiday with Airtours (as they were last year) and tickets are received from whatever Travel Agent or Tour Operator you booked the holiday with.
*OBVIOUSLY, the safety measures found in both cabins are identical to that you would find onboard any plane. These are not compromised in “PremiAir” just because your ticket cost less.
*Check-in clearly takes longer in “PremiAir” (doesn’t take a genius to work this out) as there are almost ... ...they do not work for Airtours International but Airtours themselves. These were (before the creation of My Travel) two separate companies.
The only disadvantage I have is that because of the layout of the cabin (2 seats-aisle-3 seats-aisle-2 seats) if is inevitable that someone is not going to be next to their partner as you don't find many groups of 3. I had a bit of a neck ache on the outbound journey on the way out as my partner was seated behind ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Food Quality
Customer Service
Punctuality
Space
Value for Money
very helpful
18.11.2002
(19.11.2002)
COME FLY WITH ME Review ofAirtours International - AIHby
frannie
Advantages: very family friendly, staf veryhelpful Disadvantages: none that i can think of
...airline turned out to be Airtours (or Airtours international as they seem to be called on all the paperwork). Our flight from Birmingham international airport was scheduled for take off at 4.10 pm and was pretty well on time – so far so good. However, on getting to our seats which were right at the back of the plane, we found that my husband was sat on the other side of the aisle to us and our 4 year old was sat in a seat next to the fire exit ... ...duly went to see the Airtours reps who assured us that all was ok and told us to stay put – on several occasions. Someone heard that the boarding gate was changed to b25 on the other side of the airport, still we were told to stay where we were. However, someone came and told one of the passengers (another passenger, not a rep) that our flight was boarding at another gate and sure enough, it came over the tannoy – ‘flight aih574 ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: none Disadvantages: poor service, rude staff, uncomfortable seats and much more.
Earlier on this year Airtours merged with JMC and are now operating their flights through My Travel Airways.
We booked our holiday to Florida in June 2001 and booked through JMC and was meant to be flying with them, until we had information that they changed our flight and we would now be with My Travel Airways. We wasn't too bothered as long as we got there.
We couldn't understand why they changed our flight though and moved some of us who booked ... ...have anything to do with Airtours and my travel Airways ever again, even if I was paid 1 million ounds to do it. Cos the stress caused by the problems which occured and the rudeness of the staff is not worth it. We didn't however let these problems ruin our holiday. We lost a day going on our holiday too but didn't let it run away as we still done all the things we intended to do this time around.
There was also never anyone to talk to when you ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
Advantages: Plenty of Legroom, Comfortable Seats Disadvantages: An Awful Lot! Please Read Review......
...years ago, we booked with AIRTOURS INTERNATIONAL on our first trip abroad to Mexico. We enjoyed this extremely! The only fault with the flight, was with the cramped 'cattle shed' aircraft.
So, the following year, we booked with AIRTOURS again and travelled to Dom.Republic. This time taking advantage of the flight upgrades - PREMIAIR GOLD. Costing approximately £249 each, this included wider more comfortable seats, additional legroom and a greater ... ...And were informed from other Airtours Passengers that these were not working when they had flown with airtours a year later! The same films and music channels as on our outbound journey making an 11 hr flight very boring. But to add more...............
NO COMPLIMENTARY BAR!
Apparantly, all the stock had been used on the aircrafts outbound journey to the Dominican Republic and the aircabin crew hadn't thought to re-stock, while our delay for them ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
This opinion could have been written on under any of these headings it really is charter flights in general. Hard luck Airtours
Apart from the oil it is basically lack of space. If a visitor from Mars was in his UFO hovering over a Mediterranean holiday resort airport and saw an object come out of the sky and land he would be amazed. Here was this cigar shaped thing with bits sticking out the side approx 30 yards long and 13ft wide coming to a stop, ... ...strange shaped things with 2 arms and 2 legs starting to climb down the steps. After 3 minutes he thinks how many of these things can you put in such small space and little did he know they’d been there for a least 2.5 hrs.
There is a similarity between this situation and Hallmarks slogan for their stores in the US “pile them in, stack them high and sell em cheap”
These in case you didn’t recognise them are package holiday ...
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Ciao members have rated this review on average very helpful
As many readers will be aware, I live in France and moving from one country to another seemed daunting to me, although of course I was keen, I was not expert at these things.
This is where Robinsons came in. I had the contents of my house in England... more
LIONS CLUBS INTERNATIONAL
An organisation was started up in the United States, by Melvin Jones. In Chicago in 1917 he and some business men got together, with the vision to help people less fortunate than themselves.
They agreed to abide by a... more
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