37 easyJet pax told to get off because plane too heavy!

[sn26567]

EasyJet passengers told 'get off the plane or you will be arrested' after fuelling blunder makes flight too heavy

The flight EZY1496 from Birmingham to Geneva was over-filled with 10 tonnes too much fuel so the captain asked the last 37 customers to get off the plane. When some passengers refused to budge they were informed that three police officers were waiting in the airport terminal and would arrest them if necessary. But unbeknown to the remaining passengers, their luggage was also removed from the flight to save weight. They only discovered their bags had been left back in England when they arrived in Switzerland - and some did not received their baggage for another five days.

Full story from The Daily Mail

[andorra-airport]

Who made the fuel mistake? One of the pilots, or the fuel guy? I know it's rare, but shouldn't a plane be defueled in such case? Or at least a lot of baggage offloaded? Pax comes first no...

[sn26567]

Or at least a lot of baggage offloaded? Pax comes first no...

ALL the baggage was offloaded! But the plane was still too heavy...
Can you imagine a full week of ski vacation without your basic equipment...?

[andorra-airport]

Ah, I overread that, sorry.

[luchtzak]

Who made the fuel mistake? One of the pilots, or the fuel guy? I know it's rare, but shouldn't a plane be defueled in such case? Or at least a lot of baggage offloaded? Pax comes first no...

Defuelling is time consuming and dangerous (pax have to go off the plane) so I guess the pilots (and easyJet OPS) decided to go for the quickest solution.

I hope these offloaded pax get a compensation and a confirmed seat on the next flight to Geneva as this is no 'force majeur'.

[galaxy]

Mrs Webb said: 'We had to buy all the essentials out in France - including thermal underwear and snow boots.
'Easyjet has said it will pay us £25 a day for every day we didn't have our baggage.

That's 'Easy'. Pax are idiots

[Desert Rat]

Usually, fuel company will not take the fuel back from an A/C due to the risk of contamination, indeed, when the A/C fuel tanks are not drained properly from water everyday, fuel could get contaminated by fungae, reason why the fuel boozer( )are reluctant to take the fuel back from an A/C just being uplifted.

I'm not 100% sure but I think easyjet's Airbus have the refueling selector panel on the overhead panel in the cockpit, therefore, this is probably a crew mistake,...could be the engineer though...

[regi]

This is such a bad publicity. They could have done it in a much better way. First ask volunteers, with the offer of an attractive compensation and the promise that they will arrive some hours later on another flight. ( with the luggage of all the other passengers )
By the way: when those 37 passengers were chosen, how did they know that it was the right weight saving? It could have been 37 youngsters of 45 kg, or 37 sportsmen of 90 kg.
Marketing blunder XXX. It is not always Ryanair

Idea: could this problem not being solved by deboarding everybody, let the plane take off and fly around for half an hour to burn fuel, and come back to pick up everybody + luggage again?
Some vouchers, free drinks and everybody happy. Okay, 10 tons of fuel burned and extra labour/airport costs. But always better than this non-solution.

[tolipanebas]

This is such a bad publicity. They could have done it in a much better way. First ask volunteers, with the offer of an attractive compensation and the promise that they will arrive some hours later on another flight.

That's much more expensive, and Easyjet is a LCC.
LCCs just kick of as many pax as needed randomly in case of overweight conditions and pay them the minimum legal required sum; it's not the first time this happens, and it won't be the last time either.

Besides, when is the next available flight? Just hours later? Or day(s)?
Again, this is a LCC, so their frequencies are much thinner than full service airlines, while loadfactors on their flights are generally higher, thus it isn't as easy to rebook pax as it is for network carriers. Not to mention Easyjet doesn't have alliance partners that can help out in case of sudden capacity problems either...

Hey, if you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. People shouldn't be surprised really....
At a full service airline, there's a whole lot more back up options compared to a LCC and these options are what you pay for, hence LCCs often being cheaper. All too many people think their ticket is just about a seat on a plane: well that's true when all goes well... When things turn nasty however, it's also about swift rebooking, convenient alternatives with partner airlines and hotel accomodadation in case you're really stuck... or not (in case of a LCC).

By the way: when those 37 passengers were chosen, how did they know that it was the right weight saving? It could have been 37 youngsters of 45 kg, or 37 sportsmen of 90 kg.

That doesn't matter: ALL airlines use standard weights for adult pax (some split between men and women, but that's it). Have you even been weighed at check-in for instance? Now you see why...

So if you need to lose let's say 3,100 kg after having offloaded all luggage, than that's just 3,100 / 84kg = 37 adults which need to go...

could this problem not being solved by deboarding everybody, let the plane take off and fly around for half an hour to burn fuel, and come back to pick up everybody + luggage again?
Some vouchers, free drinks and everybody happy. Okay, 10 tons of fuel burned and extra labour/airport costs. But always better than this non-solution.

Hellow... this is a LCC... any idea how much this idea of yours costs?

Nobody is going to do that; the options were either:
drop the number of pax needed (what a LCC would do)
defuel and lose the money from the fuel (what a full fare airline would do)
all the rest is even more expensive and thus completely prohibitative....

[b720]

why do people still fly with this airline? Apart from all the mishaps.. they have a rotten punctuality record.

[regi]

yes, but...
I understand the Ryanair and Easyjet low cost approach. But when we talk about money, we talk also about investment. If Easyjet would show to the passengers:" Look , we have a problem, but we will fix it at our cost, what the other one never would do"
Those passengers would stay at Easyjet. Now they have lost indefinitvely 37 passengers. And probably the whole load because of the luggage problem as well.
All those LCC invest in all kind of publicity. Is there nobody on their board room who proposes another kind of marketing?

[luchtzak]

yes, but...
I understand the Ryanair and Easyjet low cost approach. But when we talk about money, we talk also about investment. If Easyjet would show to the passengers:" Look , we have a problem, but we will fix it at our cost, what the other one never would do"
Those passengers would stay at Easyjet. Now they have lost indefinitvely 37 passengers. And probably the whole load because of the luggage problem as well.
All those LCC invest in all kind of publicity. Is there nobody on their board room who proposes another kind of marketing?

This -I am afraid- is an utopy in the world of Utopia!

[tolipanebas]

Now they have lost indefinitvely 37 passengers. And probably the whole load because of the luggage problem as well.

I am not so sure...

some time ago, there was an article in a UK newspaper about FR letting its pax down somewhere on a holiday flight and one of the pax complaining was bitching about how this was already the second time in a row they did that to him...

Some people never learn it: tempted by the cheap ticket price, people just want to be fooled it seem and simply hope they won't share in the mess LCC regularly cause...

[airazurxtror]

Some people never learn it: tempted by the cheap ticket price, people just want to be fooled it seem and simply hope they won't share in the mess LCC regularly cause...

LCC don't regularly cause mess ... at least not Ryanair.
LCC can get into a mess, just like HCC (high-cost carriers) and ECC (exorbitant cost carriers), not less but not more often either.
The mess at BRU a few weeks ago (no LCC customers there) is sufficient evidence.
And if my flight is messed up, I prefer it to be a 10 euros flight rather than a 250 or 500 euros one !

[Super Baloo]

I'm not really aware about the A320 performances but something looks strange to me here.

Birmingham airport has a 2.600 m runway almost at sea level (300 ft high). Can't a 320 take off at MTOW with such runway ? I don't know what the wind component was that day but still....

From what I found on the Internet, a A320 has a max fuel tank capacity of around 23-24 tons. If the pilots fueled 10 tons too much, it means that they took the return fuel with them as well. Can it be a huge mess up from dispatch ? Was there any fuel issue in Geneva that day that forbids Easyjet to refuel in Geneva ?
I know some pilots don't like to fly on minimum flight plan fuel but a 50% fuel increase between actual and flight plan fuel seems a lot to me.

If a 320 pilot could explain me this performance question, I'll be very glad.

[9vsmu]

I think it's more a question of MLW iso MTOW.

Another possiblilty is that there were tech items which prevented the a/c to perform at max weights (either zfw/tow/law) or runway length restrictions.

[tolipanebas]

Some people never learn it: tempted by the cheap ticket price, people just want to be fooled it seem and simply hope they won't share in the mess LCC regularly cause...

LCC don't regularly cause mess ... at least not Ryanair.
LCC can get into a mess, just like HCC (high-cost carriers) and ECC (exorbitant cost carriers), not less but not more often either.
The mess at BRU a few weeks ago (no LCC customers there) is sufficient evidence.
And if my flight is messed up, I prefer it to be a 10 euros flight rather than a 250 or 500 euros one !

The mess is not in the problem itself (as anybody can have operational problems, both within as well as beyonds his own control), but rather the solution offered to pax in case of such a problem.

That's where the mess comes into being as no LCC will help you the way a full service airline does: there is very poor re-routing capability to be expected from a LCC for instance, nor is rebooking to a later flight going to be easy and convenient. Oh, and good luck getting hotel accomodation from them.

The idea a LCC offers similar product quality as full service airlines bursts as soon as operational problems start to appear and it should be no wonder really: customer service is the easiest and least noticed cost centre to make cost cuts on so it is heavily targetted by them.
Does FR even have an online customer service department, for instance?
The idea you need to pay to complain is just one example of the cavalier treatment of passengers by LCC, but if you think that is good enough customer service, then enjoy flying them, praying they'll never let you down.

[Stij]

Flying LCC is a matter of big numbers: if you fly 10 time a year alone and they screw up once, the extra costs you incur will be easily won back on the other 9 flights. But if you travel with your family just once a year with your spouse and 3 children, don't do it, because when it goes wrong, you're in for 5 times a big surprise.

Full service carriers and the recent snow of the last weeks:
My folks had to fly BRU-FRA-CPT on LH, BRU-FRA was cancelled (18th of december) and they tried to reach FRA by train, they missed the flight in FRA and had to take a hotel. In the end they arrived 24h later in CPT then expected via JNB. All the costs (train and hotel) will be repaid by LH. One day less holidays and that's it.
A week later, the rest of the family had to fly BRU-LHR-CPT on BA. Flight BRU-LHR cancelled (24th of december). My travel agent quickly rebooked us out of AMS, we quickly drove to AMS, got our connection and arrived without delays in CPT.
So yes, they're more expensive but indeed, when the sh*t hits the fan, they help and solve your problems, if they can of course. I don't want to know what would have happened if we would have traveled low-cost.

Cheers,

Stij

[tolipanebas]

indeed stij, those are textbook examples of what kind of customer service full service airlines provide you with when things go wrong.

If that would have been a LCC flight that got cancelled, your family would just have been told to come back the next day... or the day after... or the day after... until the airline of their choice (sic) feels fit to send a plane to BRU and have open seats on it. No rerouting through other airlines when flying with a LCC, sadly, unless you pay for it yourself even if other airlines are flying on the route and have open seats left!

Hey, ultimately, you get what you pay for.

viewtopic.php?f=9&t=42547

[regi]

Flying LCC is a matter of big numbers: if you fly 10 time a year alone and they screw up once, the extra costs you incur will be easily won back on the other 9 flights. But if you travel with your family just once a year with your spouse and 3 children, don't do it, because when it goes wrong, you're in for 5 times a big surprise.

Full service carriers and the recent snow of the last weeks:
My folks had to fly BRU-FRA-CPT on LH, BRU-FRA was cancelled (18th of december) and they tried to reach FRA by train, they missed the flight in FRA and had to take a hotel. In the end they arrived 24h later in CPT then expected via JNB. All the costs (train and hotel) will be repaid by LH. One day less holidays and that's it.
A week later, the rest of the family had to fly BRU-LHR-CPT on BA. Flight BRU-LHR cancelled (24th of december). My travel agent quickly rebooked us out of AMS, we quickly drove to AMS, got our connection and arrived without delays in CPT.
So yes, they're more expensive but indeed, when the sh*t hits the fan, they help and solve your problems, if they can of course. I don't want to know what would have happened if we would have traveled low-cost.

Cheers,

Stij

That are 2 changed travel plans which would not have been dealt with accordingly with a LCC.