A 168 Hour Delay....

Next time you get involved in a delay spare a thought for one passenger who has just spent a week stranded at JFK. A Flyglobespan plane was struck by lightning on 28 June before a flight to Ireland while sitting at John F. Kennedy International Airport; it was subsequently grounded. A replacement could not be sent from the airline's base in Glasgow, because of the heightened state of security alert, and more than 200 passengers were left stranded in the USA. The last passengers didn't get home until a week later.

The carrier has "apologized profusely" for the delays and inconvenience to the passengers and said the terrorist attack incident "misplaced much of our fleet and crew and severely hampered our ability to mount an earlier rescue flight." Several passengers, who 'felt abandoned', had little choice but to find their own way home at their own expense. The airline's chairman, Tom Dalrymple, placed some blame on Swissport, their ground handlers for failing to effectively communicate the situation to affected passengers.

Now one assumes the airline had more than just third party representation at JFK. There are also just a few other airlines that fly across the Atlantic; presumably some had empty seats even at this peak time. A spokesperson for Flyglobespan said "When the dust settles on all of this we will have an internal inquiry into a number of things and how our handling agents performed will be one of them."