Cancelled Aer Lingus flight to Cork leaves 150 passengers stranded without food and accommodation

One caller, Damien, told The Opinion Line on Cork’s 96FM that the stranded passengers had no access to hotel accommodation and had to spend the night in the airport without access to food or enough water.

He said the flight was due to leave Palma at 11pm but it was 3am before they got email confirmation from the airline that the flight had been cancelled.

He said passengers were told the airline could not source hotel accommodation and advised them to find their own accommodation, saying they would be reimbursed. He said people are very angry at how the situation has been handled.

“There are people with young children, and older people who need care and nobody who could give us any information at the airport,” he said. “We didn’t want to leave the airport and walk the streets of Palma at that hour of the morning.

How can you leave people without the information? It’s a disgrace. Shame on Aer Lingus.

Some passengers have no spare cash to pay for hotels or flights home while others are now frantically trying to secure seats on flights with other airlines, with some people booking flights to Barcelona, and then on to Dublin. But it could be tomorrow before some can leave the island.

The cancellation of that Palma to Cork flight had a knock-on effect on Aer Lingus’s schedule out of Cork Airport today, with a flight to Amsterdam and its return leg both cancelled.

In a statement, Cork Airport confirmed that Aer Lingus EI861 from Palma de Mallorca to Cork, which was due to arrive at 1.05am on Thursday, was cancelled due to “technical reasons”.

“As a result, Aer Lingus EI840 Cork to Amsterdam Schiphol and EI841 Amsterdam Schiphol to Cork, which were both due to operate this morning, have been cancelled due to operational reasons.” 

Aer Lingus has been asked to comment.