Kiefer Sutherland ? Well, I don't even think that he could solve the problem me and other 153 passengers had during our flight (to be precise, NO flight) with Ryanair, the cheap but ONLY direct flight from Santander to London.
It happened last Sunday, when we had all fastened our seatbelts and the doors were securely locked. Thus spake the Captain : "L & G, welcome to Ryanair. Unfortunately we have to take an engineer to Valladolid to repair an airplane there, so our arrival in London will be delayed for approx. 1 hour" . Eeehh ??? 154 passengers had to escort our Very Important Engineer, Esq. to Valladolid, which is reachable by car in less than 3 hours ???
But anyway, since we are nice people (and helpless), we just obeyed the orders of the captain. Half an hour later, after landing in Valladolid airport, came another order from the captain "...unfortunately, now it is OUR plane that has something wrong. So, we would have to wait for around half an hour". Almost instinctively, all of us picked our mobile phones up and told the people who are supposed to pick us up at London airport to come 1,5 hours later. And half an hour later, the captain spoke again, the second sentence of those phrases above. And half an hour later, again . In total, we were IN the body of that plane from 7.20 to 10 pm (remember this, it's very important for the next episode of the story) . During that time, I remembered a passenger badly need for sugar, and another for a glass of water, and they were told "That would be 1.50 euros, sir". (sorry if I got the price wrong , maybe the water was 1.25 and Coke was.... I forgot) . In the end, 2 British children was hospitalized in Valladolid for asthma attack and another reason.
At 10 pm, at last we are told to disembark to the airport lounge after telling that we could not take off that evening due to weather conditions (it was a thin shower, but if a pilot couldn't deal with that, to be honest I'd have to question his credibility...) , and contact the Ryanair staff there. Which turned out that .... they didn't receive any instruction what to do.
Anyway, I cannot continue now, since I have a lunch appointment (yes, I am safe in London now), but if you read Spanish, you can check Diario Montanes, which is the local newspaper of Santander) of today's edition . Ah, this is the exact address of that news : http://www.eldiariomontanes.es/prensa/20070522/cantabria/santander-londres-horas-pasando_20070522.html
