It has been a bad week for flyBe in Northern Ireland. Firstly, theire knack of cancelling and delaying flights repeatedly from BHD – especially on its Scottish routes – was featured on BBC Radio Ulster’s ‘Good Morning Ulster’ programme for two days in succession.
Then I see that last Friday’s delayed BE410 from BHX to BHD has now made the news as well:
FPS Delegates Caught Up In FlyBe Flight Chaos
Ulster FPS Delegates Hit By FlyBe Technical Failure
Delegates returning to Northern Ireland from the recent Federation of Petroleum Suppliers’ Conference & Exhibition were caught up in chaos resulting from technical problems with a FlyBe flight from Birmingham to Belfast.
The FlyBe BE410 flight from Birmingham to Belfast last Friday was scheduled to arrive in Belfast at 1535hrs. However due to ongoing technical difficulties with the operating aircraft, the FlyBe flight did not arrive in Belfast until six hours later.
The chaos began earlier in the afternoon when passengers were told only 15 minutes before the scheduled take off time that the flight had been delayed for three hours, as a result of undisclosed ‘technical problems’. However, shortly before the rescheduled FlyBe flight was set to take off, it was again delayed for a further 3 hours and 10 minutes.
OilFiredUp.com spoke with several FPS attendees who were caught up in the travel chaos.
“It was complete and utter chaos.” said one delegate returning from FPS2007. “FlyBe staff didn’t even appear to know what was happening themselves, claiming announcements had been made to advise passengers of the delay, when in fact they hadn’t. To try and find out what was happening, I called FlyBe’s Head Office – and was then advised that I needed to redial on a premium rate number!
“When we did finally make contact with FlyBe staff, they began to ascribe blame to their handling agents Swissport. When I asked exactly what the cause of the ‘technical delay’ was, FlyBe staff didn’t even seem to know themselves.”
Another returning delegate complained about FlyBe’s decision to fly passenger’s luggage to Belfast City Airport on an earlier flight, whilst leaving traveling passengers stuck at Birmingham.
“We couldn’t even transfer to another flight to Belfast International Airport, as FlyBe had already flown our luggage to Belfast City Airport, despite its passengers staying firmly on the ground in Birmingham. I’ve heard of luggage being left behind, but on this occasion FlyBe left its passengers behind!”
Eventually returning delegates boarded the Belfast bound plane at 2015hrs, but the chaos didn’t stop there.
Once on board, it became evident that there were too many people on the plane and even a check of boarding passes drew a blank. Eventually it transpired that one hapless delegate didn’t appear to exist on the flight – at least not according to FlyBe… despite having purchased a ticket, checked in and having been issued with a boarding pass by FlyBe. To add insult to injury, the same delegate’s outward FlyBe flight from Belfast City to Birmingham had been cancelled.
Eventually however, the luckless FlyBe BE410 flight took off, eventually landing at Belfast City Airport c.2135hrs.
OilFiredUp.com has attempted to contact FlyBe seeking a response from the company, but at the time of writing, no response has been received.
Related link: http://www.oilfiredup.com/news/index.asp?id=649
Having had the misfortune to be on that particular flight, I can only describe flyBe’s performance as appalling, verging on cringeworthy.
Not least when one passenger asked what the problem was and was told ‘I don’t know. Probably the wheels or something.’ And that was before flyBe staff tried to pin the blame for their complete inability to handle the situation on Swissport.
Certainly not one of their finest moments 🙁
Regards
John
By: Cking - 1st May 2007 at 08:18
What good would knowing the exact nature of the technical problem have done?
I should imagine that the reason why none of the ground staff knew what was wrong with the aircraft was that the engineers were sweating blood out on the ramp trying to fix it and were to busy to tell them.
Mind you ground staff are not aversed to claiming a “technical” problem when it’s their computer system or eaven the baggage belt breaking down!
Rgds Cking
By: LBARULES - 30th April 2007 at 16:59
FlyBe certainly have some interesting moments at times! We have had problems with out of trim Embraers, numerous flights going via other airports (Liverpool, Doncaster, Glasgow just a few i’ve seen).
By: SHAMROCK321 - 27th April 2007 at 09:45
Its the same here in DUB but obvioulsy with only 5 flights a day it happens on a lesser scale. There is a Dash-8 stuck in DUB at the moment that wetn tech yesterday and we had a cancelled flight last week due to a tech aircraft in SOU.
Also one of last Sundays flights operated by a 146 was weight restricted and a whole bunch of passengers arrived with no bags.
By: A380FWOW - 26th April 2007 at 23:43
Having flown with Flybe many times on different routes I have never had a major problem, one delay of 1 hour but arrived only 20 minutes behind schedule, that was from BHX on a Monday 7am flight, for this flight it is impossible for all flights to leave on time as there are about 12 flights departing between 06.45 and 07.00 with a min of 3 minutes between departs, this I would not blame on the airline but poor management and planning at BHX.
By: JohnSwitzer - 26th April 2007 at 22:58
Yup, I had the flyBe ‘overweight’ experience in Jersey, flying to Gatwick. I volunteered to get off the plane together with 3 other passengers as the plane was overweight and got very nicely compensated for it too.
Still managed to make the connecting easyJet flight in Gatwick to Belfast – so money for old rope really 🙂
Regards
John
By: Arabella-Cox - 26th April 2007 at 22:50
Thats baddd. And makes the staff look unprofessional. Having said that, anytime ive travelled with them its been good.
I remember hearing once that the flight from Gatwick to Belfast City had to fly without luggage as it was overweight! Dont know if that was anyones fault though :confused:
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April 26, 2007 at 10:36 pm