Passengers miss flight in mix-up

http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/rss/-/1/hi/northern_ireland/8373883.stm

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Forty-two Ryanair passengers were left stranded after an airport "mix-up" over their departure gate made them miss their flight from Liverpool to Belfast.

The passengers claimed they arrived at the airport in good time on Sunday and were told to go to gate 30. They said the gate was changed at short notice.

They rushed to the new gate, but the pilot refused to let them on board.

A spokesman for Liverpool Airport said there had been a "breakdown of communications".

The passengers said they had missed the flight through no fault of their own, but they were then told they would have to pay to take another flight home.

The next available Ryanair flight did not depart until the following day, and many of the irate passengers took the ferry home instead.

'Disappeared'

The group explained that when they arrived at the gate they were originally directed to, a representative of the handling agent which operates for Ryanair was there.

They said that after a while, the Servisair employee disappeared and they thought she was going to come back to bring them on board.

But by the time they realised she was not coming back, the departure gate number had changed.

Liverpool is a "silent airport" - flight information appears on screens but is not called over a public address system.

The passengers argued that the change of gate was done at short notice and no-one came to inform them.

The company told them they could not do anything about it and that they would have to board another flight at their own cost.

'Knock-on effect'

The head of public relations at Liverpool John Lennon Airport, Robin Tudor, said the incident was under internal investigation.

"We often will put out tannoys as and when there are passengers delayed or missing from a flight, but that communication wasn't passed to us as an airport company in order to do that."

"The airline and the handling agent between them had the responsibility to get those passengers on to the right flight and clearly that's a question for the two parties as to where they go from here," he said.

Mr Tudor added that Ryanair had other responsibilities which it had to take into consideration.

"To be fair to them (Ryanair), they have a very tight schedule to meet, and if they don't it can clearly have a massive knock-on effect, potentially on other flights and even more passengers," he said.