Review rated by 12 Ciao members on average: helpful
NEVER NEVER NEVER AGAIN. We were a party of 6 travelling on XL airways boeing 767 on 15 NOV 2007 from Gatwick to Florida, through Tavel City Direct. All was well until we boaded the aircraft (on time 10.45am for a 11am take off) once on the aircraft we were told we would have a 20 minute delay as there was a hole in the runway. One hour later we were told that whilst waiting for the hole to be repaired the engineers doing a final check of the aircraft had found a small hole in the fuel tank. Two people actually got off the aircraft. We were assured it would take a maximum of one hour to take care of the matter. The weather was cold (6o) and whatever they fixed it with would not dry in the cold conditions, so we sat looking out the windows at engineers with huge heaters trying to dry this stuff. I must admit I was concered for our safety, but our holiday had cost us a lot of money and we just had to have faith that they would not let that aircraft take off if it was not safe. To cut a long story short, we actually sat on the aircraft for 5, yes 5 hours without the offer of a cup of tea or anything to eat. The aircraft had lots of children on board who were getting rather fidgety and hungry (children don't go 5 hours without food or drink). We eventually took off from Gatwick at 4.15pm, then had a 9 hour flight to look forward to, and to add insult to injury the inflight entertainment (TV) was broken so we were offered portable TV screens at a cost of £10.00 each. The crew told us that the reason we were not taken off of the aircraft was that Gatwick would have charged another boarding fee for us. I would never use XL again or Travel City Direct because they only use XL. It boils down to the old saying "you only get what you pay for". VIRGIN ATLANIC FOR US NEXT TIME.
That really is appalling service, keeping people on board for 5 hours whilst they sort out a problem and then have the cheek to try to charge passengers £10 to watch in-flight entertainment on portables because their regular screens weren't working! Definitely one to avoid in the future! x
22.01.2008 17:09
That really is appalling service, keeping people on board for 5 hours whilst they sort out a problem and then have the cheek to try to charge passengers £10 to watch in-flight entertainment on portables because their regular screens weren't working! Definitely one to avoid in the future! x
20.01.2008 10:09
A large chunk of text like this is hard to read, please let me know if you decide to add a little formatting and maybe a little more info