Passengers on a Ryanair flight faced an initial 26-hour delay returning from Rhodes to Manchester, only to be trapped on the tarmac after their flight had finally landed.
Andrew Barlow, from Reddish, Stockport was on board the flight and faced plenty of difficulty getting home after a holiday on the Greek island.
He told Manchester Evening News that passengers were getting to ready to board the flight at Rhodes airport on Friday night (5 August), before they were told their flight would not go ahead that evening.
It was not until 11.30pm on Saturday that Mr Barlow’s flight eventually took off, 26 hours after the initial flight time.
Once it landed in Manchester in the early hours of Sunday morning, Mr Barlow claims passengers were left on the tarmac for an hour due to a ground staff shortage, leading him to arrive home in Stockport shortly before 6am.
“There was no stand for us to get off, you’d have thought after such a delay we would have been given priority,” he said.
“We were stopped in the taxi stage and they told us there was no gate for us to go to, so we were sat there for around an hour. Then we were told there was no ground staff to open the doors and let us off.”
Passengers were able to disembark once a a tug came to pull them to the terminal about an hour later, but then had to be transferred to another terminal as there were no staff at passport control, Mr Barlow said.
“Why put us on the first plane initially if there was a fault, just to then put us in a hotel?”, he questioned.
Mr Barlow described how passengers had boarded what was meant to be their rescheduled flight home at 1pm, but were then informed of a technical issue and exited the plane as they waited for another aircraft.
He said that he left his hotel at 6pm the day before and spent nearly 24 hours at the airport.
“Everyone is fed up. I’ve never experienced anything like this. I should have been home last night. It’s put a blemish on the whole holiday,” Mr Barlow said on Saturday.
The initial flight was cancelled due to a “minor technical issue” with the aircraft, said Ryanair, who then apologised to passengers for the inconvenience.
Swissport said they worked to get passengers off the plane as quickly as possible.
A Swissport spokesperson said: “This flight was scheduled to land at 15:25 but instead arrived at 03:00 the following day. We realise the extra wait was frustrating but worked closely with our airline partner to get passengers off the plane as soon as we could.”
A Ryanair spokesperson said: “This flight from Rhodes to Manchester (05 Aug) was delayed overnight due to a minor technical issue with the aircraft. Overnight accommodation was provided for all affected passengers and five sets of vouchers were issued.
“Any claims that passengers were not updated are completely false, as all passengers received regular updates via SMS/email.
“This flight departed the following day (06 Aug). Ryanair sincerely apologises to affected passengers for the inconvenience caused.”
