How a simple flight to Tenerife turns into an incredible soap opera. This Thursday, Air France flight AF1162 between Paris and the Spanish island failed to land at Tenerife South-Reina Sofia Airport despite the pilot’s best efforts.
The cause is turbulence due to wind shear, which is common in the area. The plane, an Airbus A320, initially tried to land three times before the crew finally decided to land in Gran Canaria at the airport of Las Palmas, another island in the archipelago.
The plane then took off again for Tenerife, but this time it was again impossible to land after two new attempts. Unfortunately, the decision was made to return permanently to Gran Canaria. The 90 passengers were treated by Air France teams almost ten hours after their departure, without having eaten.
“Two meters from the ground, the pilot turns around again”
“And on the last attempt, the plane was two metres off the ground before turning around, frankly, we didn’t understand it.”
But tempers calm down when we explain that their flight to Tenerife has been rescheduled for this Friday morning.
This is where things get complicated again, as the plane left this morning, just as the company announced… but without the passengers and with their luggage in the hold.
“Yesterday we realised that the weather conditions prevented us from landing and the pilot explained the reason to us, they put us up in a good hotel. Today we are angry,” explains another passenger contacted by BFM Business.
“This morning we left the hotel early and waited at the airport, without much information. Five minutes before boarding, we were told (by a ground handling agent, ed.) that the plane was going to try to land again in Tenerife, but that it was not guaranteed and that if landing was still impossible, the plane would return to Paris.
“We didn’t know what to do, we waited and then we saw the plane take off without us, but with our luggage,” he continues.
“All the passengers were standing in front of the boarding gate, we saw the luggage being loaded into the hold. Then some, but not all, found out that the pilot was only going to make one attempt at landing. But in the end nobody asked us for our opinion, we were told that the pilot would come to talk to us, we are still waiting for him and then we were told that the plane would not take off and the plane took off. We have never seen anything like that in 20 years of work. Above all, the ground agent simply told us to get to Tenerife,” the traveller says.
Finish the ferry trip
Worse still, some passengers who had their luggage in the hold and who had chosen to board despite the risk of returning to Paris eventually found the door closed. Enough to infuriate even more since the plane finally made the long-awaited landing in Tenerife.
Passengers are then stranded on Gran Canaria, with no information. Some decide to take a ticket, others to reach Tenerife by ferry like our witnesses, at their own expense, paying 50 euros per passenger.
“There are about fifteen of us waiting for the boat. This creates a lot of problems and stress. There are children and elderly people who carry their treatment in their luggage, this is not normal,” the passenger complains.
Contacted, Air France said that it was the passengers who decided not to board the plane because of the risk of returning to Paris. The company said that information about a single landing attempt was given to them twice. Regarding the passengers who decided to board but were unable to, Air France said it had no information.
The operator stresses that expired baggage will be delivered to the passengers’ places of residence in Tenerife and that each passenger will be contacted to cover the costs and to resolve any refund issues.
Source: BFM TV
