Passengers spend 'sleepless night' in Gatwick

Passengers on a BritishJet flight landed at Malta International Airport at noon yesterday after spending a sleepless night in Gatwick when their flight was delayed by 12 hours.

Fuming, several expressed distress and frustration at how events had unfolded and how they were "left in the dark".

BritishJet.com flight 102 from Gatwick landed at 12.10 p.m. yesterday as opposed to midnight.

The distraught passengers said the airline refused to put them up in a hotel, even though airport managers found one at Gatwick airport, and no one seemed to know what was going on, with no BritishJet representative around to sort out the matter.

"It was awful," said passenger Rita Azzopardi. "We were not told anything about the delay until three hours later."

The passengers said they were given a total of £10 - first £2.50 and then £7.50 - with which they could barely buy anything to eat, apart from the fact that the eateries in the airport had closed by then.

They said they were particularly annoyed that the low-cost airline's CEO, Robby Borg, not only refused to pay for their hotel, but eventually switched off his phone.

"I got to the airport at 6 p.m. on Saturday," said Juliette Falzon, on the verge of tears as she spoke of her "horrible nightmare" of a night.

"It was only at midnight that we were informed that the plane was unserviceable. Passengers were shouting for a hotel... We did not know when we were going to be called to leave... At 5 a.m., we were told we would be flying on another aircraft from another airline. They should have organised that in the first place," Ms Falzon said.

It was the second time Paul Cutajar and his wife had experienced such a delay with the airline - the first of 10 hours, when they were given £3.50 to buy a snack.

Servisair, which offers ground services at airports, did its best, trying to arrange a hotel and succeeding, but the company did not want to pay, Mr Cutajar said.

"It is important that the public knows what it is entitled to," he said.

A family of four from the UK on a one-week holiday was sorry to have lost almost a day - "until we settle" - due to the delay. They were too tired to think of compensation, but would do so once they recovered their energies.

But it was not only the passengers whose night was disrupted. The chauffeur of a car hire company in Malta, Ray Debono, said he spent the entire night calling enquiries, but no one had any information "in 2006!"

Mr Debono did not want to leave his clients waiting when they landed, so he spent the whole night trying to get information on the flight over the internet.

When contacted, Mr Borg played down the situation, saying he could not understand why the passengers had kicked up such a fuss.

"This is a normal occurrence that happens to everybody; it happens to other airlines," he said, pointing out that Air Malta had just experienced a similar situation.

"At least, we got another aircraft to bring them back," he said, explaining that an Excel Airways plane was found first, but three hours later, it did not have the necessary crew. So eventually, the stranded passengers were flown out on an Icelandair plane.

Mr Borg said the passengers were given food twice. They "expected" to go to a hotel, but he said this was a complicated matter, with passengers often ending up in different hotels and being left behind in the end.

He blamed the handlers abroad, who he said had an "I don't care" attitude, and said BritishJet has only experienced three delays.

As for his phone being switched off, Mr Borg said: "I was in Switzerland and they were calling me on my mobile. I had to switch it off. What could I do from there?"