Ryanair passengers left without food or water for six hours

Ryanair passengers left without food or water for six hours

www.heraldscotland .com

Furious Scots passengers were left without food and water after a Ryanair plane packed full of holiday­makers was stranded on the tarmac for six hours.

Travellers said the airline refused to serve them drinks from the onboard trolleys despite the air conditioning being turned off during their ordeal at Prestwick Airport yesterday.

Passengers said insult was added to injury after staff were seen drinking themselves and water was apparently brought on for the pilot.

Police eventually came to the rescue, providing bottles of water and chocolate bars from the terminal building for the 16

(visit the link for the full news article)

I watched this from the airport security fence thanks to a tip off from a friend. It was warm and very humid and I can imagine how bad the situation was for the passengers who had kids with them on the flight.

6 hours with no fluid in those conditions while not being "allowed" water or to get off the plane as it sat on the runway is in my opinion criminal.

One of the passengers called the local police ( Not the airport police) to say they were being held without water and there were young children on board. If it had been me I would have kicked the door down to get them off. In this country it is an offence to leave your dog in the car with no air, yet here were kids in a sealed environment with no air conditioning, no fluids and thats where they stayed for six hours!



www.heraldscotland .com
(visit the link for the full news article)

[edit on 25-6-2010 by captiva]

Wow people today, seriously it was SIX hours, it was not a day it was a short time...

If you read the article it said

Passengers were told they were not allowed to leave the aircraft to buy drinks, although they were just yards from the terminal building, because it could mean missing a slot if one became available.

Totally understandable, i mean a lot of people are selfish and would take forever to buy something or have a chat some were, the plane was obviously waiting to take off and get the earliest slot, if they let people off the plane, they could have taken 20hours due to people taking forever.

Im not saying the service was great or even right... but in other parts of the world people are starving and dying every day from rape and violence and so on and that does not make the headlines but a few people dont get pampered for 6hours and everyone kicks up a stir... what is this world coming to

Ryanair is the worst air company.

Amazing why anyone uses them at all.

Hahaha...boy can I empathize.

But I can top it...Eastern Airlines, sometime in the early 80s...stalled thunderstorms...12 takeoffs and landings on cities all over the eastern seaboard of the U.S...19 hours...two "expired" crews...two refuelings (of the plane not us people) and no food, water, or toilets (they were stopped up) at the 15 hour mark. They would not let us off the plane until after they left us in the middle of some runway at Dulles near the end of the "trip" for three hours. When they finally got the people mover and took us into the terminal, they did have sandwiches waiting for us but I had to pee so badly it was a no-brainer decision for me, and when I got back, the sandwiches were gone. And nothing was open. Oh wait...no...I lied...they never did run out of peanuts. I remember because about the 10th time someone asked if I wanted peanuts I do believe I threatened to make peanut butter in the flight attendant's face. It was shortly thereafter they let us off the plane. Nightmare.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by ~Lucidity]

this happened to me in Houston with Continental but only for 3 hours. I can't imagine what 6 hours would've been like for them.

reply to post by bluedrake

Wow people today, seriously it was SIX hours, it was not a day it was a short time...

Are you serious??? Even 2 hours without water is a lot during hot weather. Humans need a regular intake of water during the day, not once or twice a day!!

Unbelievable that anyone thinks 6 hours is a short time, especially when the water is nearby and easy to access

Water should be available for passengers for the same reason it was for the crew, whenever it was asked for, and free of charge. Of course people shouldn't be let off the plane, but the airline company should have offered bottles of water as soon as the possibility of waiting more than an hour came about.

I will definitely NOT fly with this airline company in the future.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by john124]

reply to post by andy1033


Why are people always complaining about Ryanair. You get what you pay for. If you want free beverages and all kind of other extras, you should fly Lufthansa or any other traditional airline and pay the premium. I rather pay €30 for a ticket and buy the drink myself than paying €100. And at such a cost, you shouldn't expect much.

As a student, I use them on a regular basis (once a month) and I'm very glad with the significant leg room, almost always on-time flights and that at a very low cost.

However, in this specific situation, it is pretty lame that they said: Cabin crew told them they were unable to offer service from the drinks trolley because the products were marked as duty-free, and would be taxable if consumed before take-off.

reply to post by bluedrake


They paid their money for a service that was interrupted. They were mistreated for 6 hours while the pilot and other workers had drinks. This has nothing to do with any of the horror's going on in the world. This is about principal, it's about right and wrong. To defend this airline is stupid. Six hours on an airplane is a long time. It was made worse without water in hot and humid weather!

I read your comment and I can't say that it's anything but moronic.

reply to post by TruthSeeker8300


If you read my post till the end i said i don't disagree that the service was good or that this was right.

My point is that this can make head lines when there are murders that are going on or people getting killed from others who drink and drive, and that just gets swept under the mat so no-one can see it.

I guess some people would rather read headlines about what plane not to get on as they might not get pampered and suffer a tiny bit.... I on the other hand would rather read head lines about what areas not to travel to due to violent, or how many people are getting killed from rape and drinking and driving.... Just maybe if some people would rather read head lines about what is really going on in this world... well then some people might just catch a wake up call to the world that we live in and start doing something about it



[edit on 25-6-2010 by bluedrake]

reply to post by bluedrake


Those horrible things are reported. The one's not reported is because there's no one to report it or they are being controlled. But hey, people can start their own press and begin printing their own news papers and distribute those. Or use websites.

I think incidents such as the one with Ryanair are news worthy. Any time a customer is treated wrong, everyone should know about it. It doesn't matter what company or what the problem was. A company should aim to please its customers. Without the customers, they'd go broke.

[edit on 25-6-2010 by TruthSeeker8300]

Originally posted by bluedrake
Wow people today, seriously it was SIX hours, it was not a day it was a short time...

If you read the article it said

Passengers were told they were not allowed to leave the aircraft to buy drinks, although they were just yards from the terminal building, because it could mean missing a slot if one became available.

Totally understandable, i mean a lot of people are selfish and would take forever to buy something or have a chat some were, the plane was obviously waiting to take off and get the earliest slot, if they let people off the plane, they could have taken 20hours due to people taking forever.

Im not saying the service was great or even right... but in other parts of the world people are starving and dying every day from rape and violence and so on and that does not make the headlines but a few people dont get pampered for 6hours and everyone kicks up a stir... what is this world coming to

It is the airline's duty to serve the customer, not the customer's duty to be responsible enough to suffer of dehydration in the heat. The customer can be "selfish" enough to get a drink, in my opinion. They seriously should have brought water on board, though.

It doesn't matter how much you pay for a seat, regardless if you fly BA or Ryanair the Airline is still offering its services through that Airports regulatory commission.
Imagine it like a Railway system, you have different companies operating on a trainline, but its still Network Rail who owns the tracks, and what they say goes. A company such as Northwestern doesn't own the entire rail grid of the UK, there just licensed to operate a particular part of it.

Same with Airlines. Regardless of BA/Ryanair/Whoever, if they pass through a BAA operated airport or any other, they still have to adopt to the passenger manifested rules of operations set by the guidelines. Any breaches in codes can lead to service restrictions or termination of contracts altogether.

OMG this happened to me and my girlfriend at Christmas, they have us beat by 1 hour. Because of the snow on the runway we couldn't take off at first then when that was clear, the planes wings had frozen and needed to be de-iced It gets worse.

Then while they tried to de-ice the wings, the runway then got covered in snow once again, this tends to happen when it snows. So when the de-icing had finished we still couldn't take off until the runway was clear.

This no $hit happened 3 times in a row over a period of five hours. The whole time on board we were told 'the air conditioning can't be turned on because the wings need de-iced, therefore the plane has to be warm inside to try and increase wing temperature.'

So of course we were looking out the window at blankets of snow meanwhile on the plane our brains were boiling in our heads. Only at about 3 hours into this ordeal did they decide to go round with glasses of water. Of course there wasn't enough to go round so I passed mine on to the missus. The water was pretty much toilet water and like everything else on the plane was a tropical temperature. There were babies crying, drunk people swearing, and oddly the smell of wet dogs for some reason.

Eventually 5 hours after first boarding the captain did yet another of his apologetic announcements to say, that he had received word directly from air traffic control that it was no longer safe to fly. Fantastic. We were then told we could not leave the plane until the walkway to the airport had been de-iced because if someone slipped and fell it would be a lawsuit, so we waited some more.

When we got off the plane we then had to wait once more for our bags to be taken off the plane, and since the walkway had frozen up once again it had to be de-iced once more, for the baggage handlers to tow the luggage over.

My flight was at 5.30 I got to the airport at 4 O' clock, I didn't get home until 2.30 in the morning after paying through the nose for a taxi home.(the taxi men were loving it BTW). We finally got to our destination a day later and arrived in the house late on Christmas eve.

And after all that I am still waiting for a refund from Easyjet and it is now June. Anyway rant over sorry for derailing

I suppose it could have been worse, it could have been a hot sticky day outside too as in the OP.

A terrible thing to go through I would think. But it's great how the police brought water and food on the plane to help the passengers.

I remember having to wait for 3 hours in Barcelona, due to engine failure(which would fill any passenger with confidence!), and I wasn't too pleased about that myself. Luckily I always buy a drink at the airport to take with me on the plane and it was at night. Couldn't imagine how terrible it must have been sitting in a cramp space for about 6 hours, unable to move and sweating like a pig.

I think these passengers were treated terribly - 6 hours stuck on a plane in this heat with no air conditioning? It must have been almost unbearable, especially if any of them had asthma for example (I know from experience that heat, lack of fresh air and asthma really don't go well together).

The worst of it being that the pilot and staff seems to have got drinks for themselves - how could they not give some to the passengers? I don't get how people can be that selfish/unthoughtful, I really don't.

Ok, so they couldn't let the passengers off, fair enough - but where's the excuse for bringing some bottled water around?

Not very often I say this, but well done to the police for helping out the passengers in the end.

cmon guys is this really worthy of ATS, six hours is nothing, i work harder on a building site in the burning sun for longer than 6 hours without a drink, it done me no harm yet these people are sitting on there ass. load of bull that they moan about 6 hours without water, what about the kids in africa that go friggin days without it, get a grip of yourselves and be thankful for what you do have

reply to post by darkbake


hahahahahaha dehydration, seriously?

Secnd line, all i can say

I don't think this is worthy of being on ats. 6 hours, oooh!

This sort of thing is one reason why even a restorative revolution would be beset with sub-optimalizing friction. Millions of people who can't even amuse themselves for thirty seconds, let alone for a day, bitching, getting in the gears.

Every single time I go to the post office, I and anyone who's there in line have to donate 30 minutes while listening to cellphone talk and complaints about work. Is this something to start a thread about? Perhaps.

I know of a person who had holed up in caves in the Yucatan decades ago, on account of a hurricane that was a direct hit on his hotel room. The government, or some sort of authorities, had brought many guests there for shelter during 200 mph winds.

Here's what I got out of it: The person who related the story has an excellent ability to distill a human experience~ into a dart that describes the techno-human condition, and possibly has conflict/crisis leadership skills as well, halcyon days aside, because he seemed to have been instrumental at keeping things level. He even ventured out a bit to experience the winds.

He told me that a guy from LA moaned 'We're here on vacation; what are you going to do about it?' This in the middle of being safe during a storm that blew every window in sight clean out.

It summed up the experience succinctly...there was no need to give further accounts of shallowness and those with lack of meaning in their hours..

6 hours. Hopefully those behind this conspiracy were using eeg capture equipment to determine who has the ability to be calm and fulfilled in a crisis, a tense moment w/o a twitter or tweet, and is worthy of living.



[edit on 25-6-2010 by davidmann]

[edit on 25-6-2010 by davidmann]