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Airline vents anger over fire crew action
The airline Flybe has said it intends to ask Guernsey's States for well in excess of £100,000 in compensation.
The claim relates to the cancellation of 14 flights on Sunday, after the airport was unable to provide adequate fire cover.
An agreement between the States and the fire fighters on covering for sick colleagues came to an end on Saturday night. And on Sunday morning staff illness meant there weren't enough staff to provide the fire cover needed for Flybe's Dash 8-Q400 planes. Passengers were outraged.
Flybe is very upset by the situation and says it had no advance warning of the withdrawal of cover.
Ian Taylor, Flybe, told channelonline.tv; "As you are very much aware this situation has been dragging on since July of last year and we would have thought that it'd be very simple for the states of Guernsey and the airport to reach an arrangement with the fire service which allowed all airlines to operate safely in and out of Guernsey. Apparently, as we understand it, this agreement was allowed to lapse at the end of last week which led to an amazing situation yesterday where we had to cancel 14 flights affecting 800 passengers and this is actually, quite frankly, ridiculous."
If it weren't for the snow, all of Flybe's flights would have been operating normally today. And as far as we know, they're going to continue to do so in the coming days. And that's the difficulty with this particular work to rule, nobody knows until somebody calls in sick that there's going to be a problem with fire crew cover. And an additional issue for Flybe is they're the only airline affected, because they have the largest planes.
Flybe will compensate passengers affected and will pursue its own claim against the States. It wants to see a deal struck quickly because no one knows when this problem could arise again. Although politicians and union leaders met today for talks, so far no deal has been announced.
Source
The airline Flybe has said it intends to ask Guernsey's States for well in excess of £100,000 in compensation.
The claim relates to the cancellation of 14 flights on Sunday, after the airport was unable to provide adequate fire cover.
An agreement between the States and the fire fighters on covering for sick colleagues came to an end on Saturday night. And on Sunday morning staff illness meant there weren't enough staff to provide the fire cover needed for Flybe's Dash 8-Q400 planes. Passengers were outraged.
Flybe is very upset by the situation and says it had no advance warning of the withdrawal of cover.
Ian Taylor, Flybe, told channelonline.tv; "As you are very much aware this situation has been dragging on since July of last year and we would have thought that it'd be very simple for the states of Guernsey and the airport to reach an arrangement with the fire service which allowed all airlines to operate safely in and out of Guernsey. Apparently, as we understand it, this agreement was allowed to lapse at the end of last week which led to an amazing situation yesterday where we had to cancel 14 flights affecting 800 passengers and this is actually, quite frankly, ridiculous."
If it weren't for the snow, all of Flybe's flights would have been operating normally today. And as far as we know, they're going to continue to do so in the coming days. And that's the difficulty with this particular work to rule, nobody knows until somebody calls in sick that there's going to be a problem with fire crew cover. And an additional issue for Flybe is they're the only airline affected, because they have the largest planes.
Flybe will compensate passengers affected and will pursue its own claim against the States. It wants to see a deal struck quickly because no one knows when this problem could arise again. Although politicians and union leaders met today for talks, so far no deal has been announced.
Source