A reader of StrettoWeb, Barbara Zavagliatells of the inconveniences that the 268 passengers on the Ryanair flight Reggio Calabria-Turin suffered yesterday, Monday 1 July. The reader told us about the experience in an open letter that we report in full: “SI am returning from a trip on 1/07 with Ryanair. Departure scheduled from Reggio Calabria at 11.05 with expected arrival at 13.05 in Turin. They let us go through the gate and leave us there for over an hour, saying that our plane is arriving late from Marseille, the flight lands at around 12. They are about to open the doors when they are informed that the plane can no longer fly due to a technical problem and a part is missing to fix it. They offer us a voucher for lunch while waiting for a replacement plane from Bergamo, we wait in line for 1 hour and a half, they do not give us the voucher and they tell us that the flight is moved to Lamezia with scheduled departure at 15.30. At 15 3 buses arrive to take us there, the flight is further delayed to 17.30, then left at 17.45, in flight when there is only half an hour to go they inform us that we cannot land in Turin due to a storm and they divert us to Milan Malpensa. They block us in the vehicle for over half an hour and then release us at the airport without assistance or information. Everything we know comes through messages, terse and unclear. The buses arrive to pick us up and at 10:30 pm we get on, at 11:55 pm we arrive at Turin Caselle. Journey of hope, in all this they didn’t even give a little water to the children and the elderly, a disgrace. A shocked passenger”.
What happened yesterday is quite rare for air traffic: we are talking about a delay of over ten hours! A particularly sensational eventwhich travellers will be able to partially compensate for by asking for the due compensation as required by law. It is worth pointing out, however, that this type of disruption is very common in air transport, especially in the event of adverse weather conditions such as those that paralysed Turin yesterday afternoon with the closure of Caselle airport for a strong afternoon storm. Furthermore, airplanes are considered high-risk vehicles, in the sense that the rare accidents are difficult to overcome without dramatic consequences, so there is enormous preventive attention for maintenance and safety checks: for this reason, at the first sign of even just a hypothetical failure or problem, is preferable stop everything – as happened yesterday on the flight after arriving from Marseille – rather than risk an accident or an emergency in flight, which could be fatal.
L’Reggio Calabria Airport is experiencing, for the first time in history, an unprecedented amount of flights and connections: a very positive and convenient situation for the citywhich is obviously not exempt from those problems and disruptions that affect all the airports in the world and all the airplanes in the world. Ryanair has brought 8 new national and international routes to Reggio and if one flight in 400 suffers this type of delayit absolutely fits in the norm of national and international case law.
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