Hi! I live on the outskirts of London and I'm a professional singer. I'm promoting my own solo caree...
Hi! I live on the outskirts of London and I'm a professional singer. I'm promoting my own solo career, and I'm also part of a girl trio!! If there are any A&R guys out there please feel free to leave me a message!! LOL!
Member since:18.02.2001
Reviews:52
Members who trust:68
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!
How helpful would this review be to a person making a buying decision? Rating guidelines
what a nice experience - clearly another one of these airlines that is ok as long as nothing goes wrong.
the_mad_cabbie 14.07.2001 01:26
What a dreadful way to end your holiday......Dublin airport was packed to capacity with people as well, who couldn't get away.....Good op about an awful experience.....Thanks for the CoT add, BTW......Ken
frannie 11.07.2001 19:23
I have to say that for us on thw hole, Airtours were Ok but its was the lack of information from the reps at the airport that got up our noses (and e didn't even get delayed). hope you've recovered from the experience!
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very helpful by (100%):
