Airline may stop winter NY service

THE airline that6 left 500 passengers stranded in three airports on both sides of the Atlantic for five days, after lightning struck one of its aircraft, may stop flights to New York during the winter.

Flyglobespan met with officials from Knock Airport yesterday to discuss what had happened to the flights on June 28 to cause such havoc.

It also discussed the future of flights between the US and Knock after Liverpool Airport, where the flights through Knock originate from, said it was no longer going to offer flights during the winter.

Afterwards neither side would say whether flights would be continued after October 31.

Tom Dalrymple, of Flyglobespan, said the problems started when the flight from JFK to Knock could not take off because of a warning light on the engine management system. That had been caused by the plane being struck by lightning when on the ground in New York.

He said the airline could have sent a rescue aircraft from Britain, but crew rest time meant that it would not have taken off any earlier than the scheduled repaired aircraft.

Passengers were put in hotels for the night.

When the flight was due to take off again, the plane was taxiing for take-off and the same warning light came on — and the pilot had no option but to cancel the flight. The passengers were again given hotel accommodation although many had decided to make their own way home via other carriers.

He said at that point the opinion of the JFK engineers was that the fault was electrical and would be fixable following further investigation. That became the only solution available, he said, after Glasgow Airport was hit by a terrorist attack, which closed the airport for 24 hours, grounding six of the airline’s fleet at that base and additional aircraft at other airports.

Mr Dalrymple said that a full investigation was being carried out.