Aer Lingus defends cancellation of flight into Cork as passengers claim they were left without food and accommodation

AER Lingus has defended its cancellation of a late night flight from Palma de Mallorca to Cork last night amid claims that over a hundred passengers were left stranded at the airport overnight with no food, accommodation, or even communication from the air line.

In a statement Aer Lingus said that due to weather conditions on arrival in Palma yesterday, two aircraft required inspections and were unavoidably grounded at the airport.

“This led to passengers having to remain in Palma for the night. Passengers were offered hotel accommodation and/or reimbursement for hotel accommodation while they awaited their return flight which is re-scheduled for later today.

“This subsequently led to the disruption of our Cork – Amsterdam service this morning due to the unavailability of aircraft.

“All Cork customers have been rebooked on to flights at a later time or date and/or offered refunds. Aer Lingus apologises for this disruption.”

However, passenger Damien Ligier contacted the Opinion Line on Cork’s 96FM and said that the matter had been handled in a “shameful” manner by Aer Lingus.

He states that number of passengers were informed that they will be flown to Barcelona and then onwards to Dublin tomorrow with a coach bringing them on their final journey home to Cork.

PASSENGER

Mr Ligier said that passengers weren’t even made aware that their 11pm flight had been cancelled until they got an email to that effect from the company at about 3am today.

“Nobody from the Aer Lingus staff came over to say anything about why it was cancelled. Nothing. We were supposed to come back home at 11pm.

“There was no representative from Aer Lingus to say why it was cancelled, what we are supposed to do or anything. We only had airport staff saying to ‘wait a few moments you will get an email on what to do.’ 

“We got an email around 3am that Aer Lingus can’t find any hotel and we have to get a hotel and you can claim it back afterwards. We didn’t hear anything from them on what to do only from the airport staff.

They (the airport ground staff) said there was a technical issue with the airplane. We didn’t have any food. There was people with kids. I am in the lucky situation that I have two teenagers so that I was not too bad. There was a family with really small kids, there was elderly people and there was nobody who could give us any information.” 

Mr Ligier said that the company had completely failed in relation to its duty of care to passengers.

“I didn’t want to leave the airport because what are you going to do? Walk around the streets in Palma during the night because there is no hotels.

“We were trying to find a hotel today. Last night there was no possibility. Our luggage was still in the airport (so the staff) asked us to pick it up. Before 4am staff asked us gently to leave the airport and two police men came over to us and said ‘you can’t stay here.’ We didn’t have any food. Everything was closed up. Aer Lingus didn’t give us any food. There is not even a desk with a representative to talk to us. I have been ringing them since 6am.” 

 Mr Ligier said that that he will need another holiday by the time he arrives back to his home in Cork.

“We have to stay here for another 24 hours because there is no flight going directly to Cork city.

“We have a flight tomorrow from Mallorca to Barcelona. After that we go from Barcelona to Dublin and then travel on the air coach back to Cork city. It will take us a day to get home.

“I am not so bad but there are people who don’t have any savings with them who are struggling to do something.

“How you can leave people without any information? Even a Captain saying ‘guys we have a technical issue.’ Shame on Aer Lingus.”