Soon after, we went through security and were walking towards the gate, when suddenly we saw on the screens that our flight was cancelled. We were surprised so we headed back to the check-in counters to find out that indeed the flight was cancelled due to engine problems. There were seventeen of us on that evening direct flight to Malaga and we were all told that the only option available was to stay one more night in Tenerife then take a very early flight the next day to Gran Canaria, wait a few hours then connect on the flight to Malaga. Most, if not all the passengers were indignant that we were not being flown back on a direct flight but as we were not given any other option, we had no choice but to agree.
I went back to pick up our checked-in luggage and while I was there, my husband overheard one of the Iberia supervisors speaking about a direct flight to Malaga and so insisted the we be put on that flight as we were traveling with an infant. After about an hour to sort out all the new boarding passes issued, we all piled into a bus to go to Santa Cruz (Tenerife's main town) and spend a night at the three-star Hotel Taburiente.
The next morning after breakfast, we took a taxi back to the airport and checked-in again for the Iberia direct flight to Malaga. Before boarding, I noticed this poster about passengers rights and decided to take a photo of it - if we had only known what our rights were the night before, we would have had a chance to either demand a refund of our ticket or asked for a compensation from 125 euros up to 600 euros per person because of a cancelled flight. Interesting to note that these passenger's rights are for all of the European Union and that there is a Top Ten for passengers on the web page and a freephone number to contact - 0800 6 7 8 9 10 11. Good to know for our next flight.
2 comments:
oh sorry that you didn't think of trying to get some compensation out of them. We always do that with all airlines - if flight is delayed or cancelled, it's the airlines fault so definitely they have to compensate you for that. U can try writing in to the airlines even now to get some free mileage or free hotel stay or even some cheques to be used with next flight. It never hurts to try.
Well, they did work out the flights but it was amazing how they pretended that there was no other direct flight back to Malaga the next day. I sometimes think airlines should have one special circle in hell (Dante style) just for how they treat passengers like s*#t. They really take advantage of their customers.
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