Exhausted and too late for Garth Brooks: Our 35-hour journey from Malaga to Cork

Instead of focusing on its failed IT system, Aer Lingus should examine its communication channels with customers. Access to real-life people would be a start

Terminal 2 in Dublin Airport on Saturday afternoon as Aer Lingus flights scheduled to depart to and from  Dublin Airport involving most European and UK destinations were cancelled due to an ongoing IT problem at the airline. Picture: Sam Boal / RollingNews.ie

A simple journey from Malaga in Spain to Cork Airport took me 35 hours with no communication from Aer Lingus other than a yellowed “delay notice” sheet, presumably printed in the 1990s.

It offered passengers “two telephone calls, telex or fax messages, or emails". 

No customer representative appeared to inform passengers of subsequent delays and the eventual cancellation of the flight.

Instead, we lived in hope. 

The 4.30pm flight on Saturday was delayed to 6.30pm on the screen. Perfectly understandable, we thought, given passengers had to be checked in manually because of the IT systems failure.

Then a €15 food voucher appeared on a counter. However, the only restaurant which didn’t involve going through security again was the appropriately named Solo café.

There, a lone staff member had to make hundreds of drinks and deal with passengers when the sandwiches ran out.

Our flight was then delayed to 11.25pm. At this point, we were looking at the board so often that it became like the statue in Ballinspittle. You weren’t quite sure what you were seeing.

At about 10pm, our flight was cancelled on the screen. 

'Very bad airline'

We went to the airport police, who told us to pick up our luggage at a carousel several minutes away. One security member sympathised with us. Our national carrier was a “very bad airline”, she said with a sigh.

Eventually, an airport worker, who seemed to have been contracted from another airline, told us a fairytale about being put up in five-star resorts.

We were to be “served breakfast, lunch, and dinner” and then a connecting bus would bring us to Malaga airport the next day for our return flights.

I was one of the fortunate ones who was sent to a luxurious hotel. 

Staff were helpful but we received a brown paper bag with a sandwich, juice, and a banana — the “peasant package” we called it.

One elderly lady told me of being brought to a party hotel in Torremolinos. Another spoke of being separated from her family. 

On Sunday morning, we received a text to say we were booked on a British Airways (BA) flight to London Heathrow at 1pm.

No bus materialised. A €40 taxi ride to Malaga airport later we were subsequently flown to London. 

The captain on BA apologised profusely as the flight had been delayed by 20 minutes. The Irish passengers could only giggle at the civility of it all.

We then waited for over seven hours for our connecting Aer Lingus flight to Cork without a text of apology or the provision of a food voucher.

We eventually arrived at Cork Airport shortly before midnight last night. Four exhausted sisters from Limerick had to then make the journey by car home, with one having missed the Garth Brooks concert in Dublin because of the delay.

Aer Lingus claims to have added additional capacity and services on a number of European routes on Monday and Tuesday to assist passengers still stranded overseas.

The company has apologised for the “severe disruption caused”. 

However, instead of focusing on its failed IT system, it should examine its communication channels with customers. Access to real-life people would be a start.