As regular travellers will know, the British Airways flight from Grand Cayman to London’s Heathrow Airport usually takes around 12 hours, including a brief stop in Nassau, Bahamas.
For the unfortunate passengers on Saturday’s flight, however, the journey took three times that, with the plane touching down in the UK 23 hours and 55 minutes after its scheduled arrival.
The journey had started well, with the BA252 flight taking off from George Town one full minute ahead of schedule on Saturday and landing in Nassau, Bahamas at 8:14pm local time – 26 minutes early.
But passengers waiting on the tarmac during the usual stopover were soon informed that a fuel leak had been discovered and there were no replacement parts available to fix the issue. Passengers had to spend the night in the Breezes resort hotel, before facing lengthy delays checking back into the flight the next day.
Chaos
One passenger, who declined to be named, told the Compass that she didn’t get to bed until 3am on Sunday morning due to the “chaos”, and said that she would never fly with the airline again.
“There were people like ourselves with connecting flights, which we all had to rebook, and then the plane from Bahamas was delayed by a further two-and-a-half hours,” she said. “Once we finally got to Heathrow, it took us 50 minutes to get off the plane, so we and many others missed our rebooked connections.”
To add to the misery, there was no hot food on the entire flight.
“I understand that safety comes first, but it’s the aftermath that’s been frustrating,” she said.
A parent posted on Facebook about their daughter who was on the same flight, saying she had had to queue for four hours to check into the flight in the Bahamas, only for her luggage to be lost.
A statement from British Airways said, “We have apologised and thanked our customers for their patience whilst our teams resolved a technical issue. The safety of our customers and crew is always our top priority and we would never operate a flight unless it was safe to do so.”
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