‘Where is the duty of care?’ - 15-year-old among stranded passengers

G-ORAI was already running an hour behind when it prepared to operate the 6.10pm to London Gatwick on Sunday night. While the plane took off, it abruptly turned back to Guernsey 10 minutes into the flight. Eventually both rotations were cancelled.

Shanine Levrier said Aurigny needed to do more to help vulnerable passengers when flights were delayed or cancelled after her 15-year-old daughter was told on Sunday night at Gatwick she was being booked on a service from London City in two days’ time.

‘The service is not fit for purpose,’ she said.

‘Where is the duty of care? She should have been put on the next available flight and home as soon as possible. Absolutely no exceptions.’

Miss Levrier made staff aware her daughter was only 15 when she booked the outbound flight from Guernsey.

‘I filled in a form for her to hand to ground staff at the gate. This had details of her return flight too. I know they no longer chaperone flights, but there needs to be a duty of care. Minors and disabled passengers should be highlighted and when cancellations happen they should be prioritised to the next available flight.’

She said her daughter had been very responsible, but she was stressed over the incident.

‘Luckily we had friends staying at the Gatwick Hilton because an earlier flight had been cancelled who were able to step in and help.’

Having originally been put on a return flight on Tuesday, Miss Levrier said she was on hold for an hour to Aurigny this morning so her daughter could be transferred to the last flight yesterday.

‘That only took three minutes, so why wasn’t she put on that flight automatically? We are paying Aurigny to be responsible from the start on our journey to the finish so staff should be available when things go wrong.

‘They don’t have enough support staff and just seem to be winging it.’

Aurigny has been approached for comment.

Some of the passengers on the cancelled Gatwick flight managed to return on a delayed flight this morning.

Among them was Kate Brown.

‘It just appears Aurigny have completely imploded,’ she said.

‘The communication is abysmal, we found out our flight was cancelled by refreshing the website, at the same time we were being called to Gate Two to begin boarding. I can’t have my elderly parents visit me on the island anymore. The service just isn’t reliable enough.’

Peter Aeschbacher-Ayres, 55, was one of the people on the outbound plane to Gatwick – travelling to the UK the day before a doctor’s appointment.

He said passengers were kept in the airport for quite some time after disembarking the faulty aircraft, with limited information, before being boarded again at 9pm.

Hopes of taking off were soon dashed, as the captain said they did not have time to do a full Gatwick rotation – which takes about three hours.

It means Mr Aeschbacher-Ayres will now need to wait until November for a rescheduled hospital appointment.

He said he was surrounded by similarly disrupted passengers.

When he turned down his seats for yesterday’s flight, as he was unable to make his appointment in time, they went to a young couple behind him, who had been trying to get back to the UK since Thursday.

He said he was worried that Guernsey’s reputation as a tourism and business centre was being seriously damaged.

‘I’m shocked and appalled to see things going from bad to worse, rather than better,’ he said.

He said he was worried the poor service would encourage business to head to Jersey instead.