Anna van Praagh
(Picture: Matt Writtle)Beaches! Sun! Swimming pools! What could be better after two long years of pandemic and a punishing British winter than a lovely holiday? To which I might say, dear reader, careful what you wish for. For I have discovered the 10th circle of hell, and it is travelling by air on a budget airline in holiday season.
The day before we were flying for a half-term holiday last week to Sardinia, I logged on to the easyJet website to try to book my bag in. Oh! The website said the return leg of our flight was cancelled. Why had no one told us?
We couldn’t find any easyJet return flights and, of course, we couldn’t get through to anyone in customer services (sidenote: this is a recurring theme, because customer service doesn’t exist anymore, airlines these days are just a website and some planes). After scouring the internet for hours, we finally spent another £1,200 (on top of the £1,200 we had already spent on four outbound journeys) on return flights that ended our holiday a day earlier and had a four-hour stopover in Milan.
After being turned back on the bus to our plane and waiting many hours at the war-torn airport (with stampeding hordes everywhere you looked) and no explanation or reassurance, we finally made it to Sardinia. In the end, easyJet got us on (another delayed) flight back. But will they compensate us for the other return flights we bought or pay for the extra night in our hotel? Honestly, I have no idea.
It’s chaos out there in the air. EasyJet alone has cancelled more than 300 flights across Europe over the past three days. Last night, the airline said it will continue to axe at least 30 flights a day with passengers receiving typically just three days’ notice. Wizz Air is cancelling flights left, right and centre and British Airways axed more than 100 short haul flights at Heathrow yesterday with people supposed to sitting their exams stranded abroad.
Do airlines hate their passengers? That was the thought that kept replaying in my head as I spent all those hours trying to get back from Sardinia. Of course I understand airlines are suffering with lack of staff and resources post-pandemic. But when they finally recover, after treating everyone so horrifically, will their customers still be there?
