Stranded, hungry and locked out of Auckland airport late at night with two children in tow, a Dunedin woman says her Jetstar experience went from bad to worse when Saturday night's flight from Auckland to Dunedin was cancelled.
Tammy Ung, of Dunedin, contacted the Otago Daily Times yesterday to say a report in yesterday's edition about the issues resulting from the cancellation of flight JQ7243 because of an engineering fault with the plane was just part of the story.
The real problems for her family and dozens of other passengers began after the flight, scheduled to leave at 5.45pm, was cancelled at 8.30pm, she said.
She said she, her sister and two of their children, aged 7 and 10, had to wait almost two hours, along with several older passengers, in a queue to have their flights moved to the next day and accommodation arranged.
They were told to wait outside for a shuttle to the hotel, which would come every 15 minutes.
Food outlets at the airport were by this time closed.
After about 40 minutes of waiting with about 50 others from the flight, one of the passengers re-entered the terminal and asked a staff member when the shuttles were coming. The staff member said they did not know and asked the passenger to return outside.
A voice on the loudspeaker then announced the terminal was closing, and the doors were subsequently locked.
When the 11-seater shuttle arrived, about 15 minutes later, the driver told Ms Ung he had not returned earlier because he was not told more people were waiting.
Had he known, he would have sent a bus instead. When the group finally arrived at the hotel, they discovered they were not booked in, but fortunately the hotel was ''great'' and said it would deal with Jetstar, Ms Ung said.
Having not eaten since 4pm, the children were ''starving''. Rather than wait an hour for room-service, they went to bed about midnight having eaten a ''snack'' of long-life milk mixed with chocolate milk powder from the hotel room, she said.
''It was pretty shocking. You understand the flight being cancelled. You don't want to get on a dodgy plane. But everything from then on was handled so badly.''
After a previous bad experience, when her flight to a Lady Gaga concert was cancelled, she was ''probably not'' going to fly Jetstar again.
The company, which apologised on Sunday, did so again yesterday.
''We did our best to manage this situation late at night and look after inconvenienced customers and we further apologise for any shortcomings in the recovery process,'' a spokeswoman said.
The company would respond to feedback from customers who contacted Jetstar directly, she said.
