Reader’s letter: WizzAir left Madeira-London flight passengers in trouble

“I’m very astonished at the poor service myself and roughly 50 other passengers have received from WizzAir. I have spoken to my lawyer and BBC News and the word will come out because it’s truly unbelievable behaviour from your company!” – the passenger started his letter he forwarded to us. Below you can read it substantially unchanged.

A flight from Madeira Funchal to London Gatwick got cancelled on Friday 17th June 2022. Some passengers managed to grab a flight the next day or on Monday. In my case, they couldn’t find one for me until the next Friday. However, I spoke up and told them it was unacceptable as I could see they were just being lazy sending people in various directions for information. They then found one for Tuesday 21st June 2022 for me.

The next step was finding a hotel and means of transport for these passengers for however long their stay was, that’s when the real problems started. We had been at the airport from 5pm and they didn’t inform us about a hotel until about 10:30pm. They then proceeded to tell us that transport wasn’t available and every passenger had to find their own way to the hotel.

Our taxi from the airport to the hotel cost us €90!!

I asked a staff member if our hotel room was booked until Tuesday, which was the day of the next flight available they had for myself and my partner, and they said yes! We proceeded to go to the hotel tired and very hungry to then be told by the staff at the hotel that no, it was only a one-night stay. We stayed calm of course because this wasn’t the hotel’s fault and we were too hungry to sort anything out at the time, as it was already 11:30pm when we arrived there.

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We went out and explored the area as we wanted to find somewhere we could have something to eat, however all kitchens were closed, but luckily enough, a kind man who owned one of the bars saw we were stressed and struggling so he opened the kitchen for us and made us a quick sandwich which was very delicious! I went back to the bar everyday while I was there to eat, to thank him and because his food was AMAZING!

The next day arrived and the airport and the hotel tried to get into contact with WizzAir; however WizzAir was NOT helping at all… The hotel staff really helped us a lot by extending our stay in our rooms until 6pm, they didn’t have to do that but they had more of a heart than WizzAir did, and they didn’t want to leave us stranded. WizzAir finally decided to extend the stay for another day with dinner included to ‘make up for the trouble caused’. WizzAir also told the hotel that they were going to sort out the extended stay early in the morning so passengers weren’t worried. During this whole period, the passengers were left clueless with no information whatsoever.

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The next day arrived and WizzAir gave misinformation again: they did not sort it out early, instead they ignored passengers’ calls, hotels’ calls, and airport calls and at 6pm, the passengers got told to deal with it ourselves! We pretty much all got stranded! Not acceptable at all!! I called WizzAir customer service a good few times and they hung up the phone on my face twice as I was explaining the situation to them. Very unprofessional. I asked them to transfer the call over to someone who could help me and they didn’t, they kept telling me to email them. But why should I email them at an urgent time like this? By the time they reply, I would have been back in London. I asked them a simple question: ‘is WizzAir really
going to leave 50+ passengers stranded on an island?’ The person on the other end didn’t know how to reply to that.

The outcome at the end was that all passengers had to pay for their own transport and hotel and food and drink and then keep the receipts so WizzAir could give us the money back. But the only issue is that people come on holiday with enough money for themselves for the stay so money was very minimal for everyone. And people who work are also missing days which means less money when they get back… and another 3-4 days stuck in a different country is very costly when buying breakfast, lunch and dinner, keeping hydrated, ect. How long are they going to take to give all passengers this money back? Do they even have enough money to pay everyone back? Because me and my Partner alone spent about €250 extra on food and drink to survive and we didn’t have a hotel room to stay in so we slept at the beach with the cockroaches, rats and crabs for 2 days. So imagine how much other people spent on hotels, food, drink, ect.