Stuck in a plane for ten hours: Criticizes EasyJet

It took Dóróthe Guðjónsdóttir ten hours to get home from France, where she was on a short holiday. Dóróthe flew from Basel in Switzerland with the British airlines EasyJet and the trip home was supposed to take about four hours. Yet bad weather changed the trip dramatically.

The passengers were not allowed to exit

On Tuesday the weather was extremely bad nearly everywhere in Iceland and transport stopped. Airstrips at Keflavík Aiport were closed as it was not possible to land there because of the weather. Therefore, all airlines delayed their flight except EasyJet.

Instead, it was decided to land at the airport of Egilsstaðir and the passengers sat in the plane for two hours. It was not allowed to leave the airplane, as it was not possible to have the staff receive and serve the passengers.

"We flew from there to Keflavík where we were allowed to sit in a plane for additional four hours before we were transported to the terminal," Dóróthe says, who criticizes the working procedure of the airline. She had checked if it was possible to land in Keflavík and got the answer that it was not going to heppen. Therefore, she questions the decision of leaving when it was evident how bad the weather was in Iceland.

Bad feeling

"I would rather have waited inside an airport in Basel rather than sitting in an airplane for ten hours. The feeling of being in the plane was not good. The air was not good and I was getting pretty impatient because you want to get home after a vacation. So this was an adventure per se," she says.

The passengers of six airplanes waited for hours at Keflavík Airport as it was not possible to connect the entrance because of the storm wind. Two planes from EasyJet were among them, but they both landed first at Egillstaðir.

When asked if she got claustrophobic, she says that it was not the case. However, the patience soon went away and people got considerably restless.

„Otherwise, the people were patient and just sat in their seat where they tried to read and kill time in some way."

About 23.00 Dóróthe and other passengers of the plaine got out of the airplane. She says that many were hungry and tired in that time, as there was not much food in the airplane.