Chaos: Wizz Air flights in brutal delays, many passengers missed Cyprus plane!
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The waiting time for the Budapest-Catania flight from Budapest to Catania exceeded two days. In another case, the plane to Cyprus took off with a 6-hour-long delay. However, in the latter case, many passengers missed the flight due to lack of information.
Wizz Air flight to and from Catania in days-long delays
According to Utazómajom, a Hungarian travel news outlet, Wizz Air’s W6 2353 flight should have left Catania in Sicily at 6.25 PM on 1 July. First, the airline modified that to 10.00 PM and checked the passengers in. Later it became clear that the plane would not depart, so they got a HUF 10,000 (EUR 25.32) voucher.
The next departure time was 8 AM the next day, modified to 7.30 PM and then 11.20 PM. Utazómajom’s reader bought her ticket via a travel agency.
The delay of the twin from Catania was similar. Finally, the flight was cancelled. However, the situation of the passengers in Sicily was much worse than in Budapest. There were so many people that they could not get fresh air or find a seat.
The airline could find accommodation only at 3 AM. In the morning, they had to leave the hotel and continue to wait for their delayed flight on Tuesday. Based on the passengers, Wizz Air did not share any detailed information, only notifications of the delays. There were 200 passengers waiting for the flight, some of them spending the night at the airport, children and older people included.
Finally, the flight to Catania took off at 3.27 AM today and landed at 5.20 AM in Budapest. The delay was two days.
Air traffic controllers, engine problems
Wizz Air said the multiple delays were not their fault but the result of the labour shortage of the traffic controllers. We detailed that in THIS article. Utazómajom said the airline launched multiple new flights yesterday to Yerevan (Armenia), Bucharest and Brassó (Brasov), and they hope the delays will not become more frequent because of that.
Moreover, they must tackle the problems of the Pratt & Whitney engines because of which lots of their planes are grounded, and they must wet-lease aircraft. Even so, the President of the airline remained confident about future prospects. We wrote about that HERE.
Wizz Air is fine if you’re flight is broadly on time. If not, it’s chaos. Passengers have legal rights but don’t expect to be able to enforce them. The airline plays games with things like food vouchers and hotel accommodation with a view to minimising the uptake, for example, they’ll keep putting the departure time back while knowing there was no chance of the flight taking off that day. They’ll then cancel at 1am, reschedule departure for 7am the following morning, knowing that most passengers won’t bother going to the hotel offered in the knowledge they would need to be back at the airport at 5am which requires a 4am wake up call, so they’ll bed down at the airport and save the airline a fortune in hotel bills. If they were honest and cancelled at 6pm with the replacement scheduled for the following morning, nearly all passengers would demand a hotel room. Your chances of getting compensation are also zero if you don’t use a third party claims expert who take a cut of the compensation.