BMI baby

[marcogiov]

The cheap way to fly from Edinburgh to Nottingham - via Jersey

Andrew Clark, transport correspondent
Wednesday March 17, 2004
The Guardian

Settling into their seats, passengers on a low-cost flight from Edinburgh to Nottingham expected a routine one-hour journey. Little did they know that the captain intended to take them on a 600-mile tour of the British Isles.
The BmiBaby flight, with 70 people on board, took off from Edinburgh at 9.30pm on Friday. But shortly after becoming airborne, the pilot told astonished passengers that the plane was being diverted to pick up 56 people stranded by a broken down plane in Jersey, 300 miles further south.

Tempers finally snapped when the pilot added that instead of returning directly to Nottingham East Midlands airport, he intended to take the stranded passengers to Cardiff first.

The proposed four-hour, 600-mile double diversion prompted a near mutiny, with passengers "screaming" and refusing to sit down, according to one witness.

When the plane arrived in the Channel Islands, passengers staged a 20-minute protest, demanding that the captain scrapped plans to go to Wales. After a tense standoff, the pilot agreed to fly to Nottingham and lay on a coach service to take other passengers to Cardiff.

BmiBaby's managing director, Tony Davis, said the airline had been "between a rock and a hard place". He said an aircraft had broken down at Jersey shortly before the airport was due to shut for the evening, which would have left the passengers stranded until the next morning.

"We had a deadline because of the closure time of the airport," he said.

"We were struggling to get an aircraft in there early enough to pick them up."

Passengers from Edinburgh finally arrived in the East Midlands at 1am, nearly four hours after leaving Edinburgh. Cardiff-bound travellers had to wait until 4am for a bus.

The incident came soon after criticism of budget airlines for trying to avoid costs such as overnight hotel accommodation. Ryanair recently announced it was ordering aircraft with no seat covers or window blinds, and planned to charge for luggage.

Mr Davis said the Edinburgh passengers would not be entitled to any compensation because they had been held up for less than four hours.

[sarrebal]

God save the Queen! And the majors....