After two years living in Italy, it took Cindy Lund 11 days to make it home from Bari
On March 2nd, my husband, two young children and I were due to return to Ireland after having spent two years living in Italy. We booked flights from Bari with Easyjet to Rome, then Aer Lingus flights from Rome to Cork. We had a large amount of luggage with us as we were relocating. We boarded our flight more or less on time at 12.30pm and were quite impressed with the Easyjet service. Two hours later, though, we were still on the plane, on the runway, in Bari.
The first indication that all was not well was when the air hostess announced chirpily that there was a “minor technical problem” and we would be delayed for 10-15 minutes. We waited at least 20 minutes for the engineer to arrive. Unfortunately, he was an Alitalia engineer and was not authorised to tighten Easyjet screws. Another 20 minutes passed and the pilot appeared. He apologised again for the delay and explained that all they were waiting for was the go-ahead from Rome, but that nobody seemed to be answering the phone. Finally, two hours later, we were told to disembark.
It was announced that our flight was delayed until 7pm, leaving us just enough time to make the Aer Lingus flight at 8.45pm. At 4.30pm, a further announcement told us that the flight was now cancelled, so we had to hire a car and drive home. I sent an e-mail to Easyjet to which they have so far failed to respond.
The following Wednesday, March 11th, there were cheap flights from Rome to Cork with Aer Lingus so we decided to wait until then. This time we booked a hire car to drive to Rome. Off we set, bags repacked, full of faith. Just before Naples, on a particularly windy and hilly stretch of the autostrada, the car began to slow down. There was a smell of burning and the car came to a standstill. There we were, stranded in a very dangerous position on the edge of the motorway, with drivers careering around a corner just behind us. Luckily there were some motorway maintenance workers nearby who helped to push the car into the safety of a lay-by. It was 4pm and we were three hours from Rome airport.
I rang the car-hire company, Dollar Thrifty, at Naples and said we needed a car immediately. Unfortunately, they said that wasn’t possible but that they would send a breakdown truck in 40 minutes. Two hours later a truck appeared, towed us a couple of miles to a service station, then expected us to get out of the truck with our luggage and exhausted children and wait for the hire car. We flatly refused and after a phone call to Dollar Thrifty the breakdown truck driver agreed to let us wait in the truck until the car arrived. Half an hour later it did. Then we had to take the guy who had brought the car back to Naples airport.
By now we had missed our second flight. The man at the Dollar Thrifty desk assured us he had done all he could. He said the firm’s only obligation in cases of breakdown is to send a truck, then another car.
We spent the night in Naples and the following day we drove to Rome, where we had to spend another night because there was no flight to Cork until Friday 13th. A friend suggested we contact Aer Lingus and plead our case. Great idea, we thought. This was why we were returning to Ireland despite the economic disaster, because people care. Surely Ireland’s friendly airline would help us?
Oh, the naivety. When we tried to contact customer service at Aer Lingus we quickly realised that this doesn’t actually exist any more. After an hour on the phone begging to talk to someone who was higher than a ticket agent, we finally got to speak to a very nice lad who told us apologetically that he couldn’t do anything to help us.
We ended up paying for a third lot of flights from Rome to Cork. Because we booked the day before, the prices were high – €700 as opposed to our Wednesday flights, which had cost €185. The whole journey ended up costing more than return flights to Australia.
When looking up our rights, it became apparent that we have few. Airlines can plead in almost every case of cancellation that it was
“beyond their control”. We feel we have nowhere to turn to get any compensation and it is sickening. We got home at midnight, on Friday, March 13th.
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