Air 2000 Review

Good Points
Nice food, friendly cabin crew, reassuring pilot, quick check-in queue.

Bad Points
Delay, false reason for delay.

General Comments
My family and I recently flew with Air 2000 from Manchester to Tenerife. Everything from the word go went so smoothly. The check in queue went down quickly, staff were helpful and the plane left on time.

We had a fab holiday and we were very sad about leaving. When we had to go home we arrived at the airport 2 hours early as required, as did everybody else. We were queueing for 30 minutes before the queue started moving which was rather disappointing. Our flight home was at 3:10 am so we were very exhausted. All passengers arrived at the departure lounge on time and we were all waiting patiently for an announcement to tell us that our flight was boarding. We had no announcement until an hour later when we were told that the plane had technical difficulties and they would get back to us shortly to tell us the arrangments. 30 minutes later we were told that the flight was delayed and that some coaches were coming to pick up all 240 of us and take us to a hotel...right at the other side of the island, 65km away! We were very angry about this decision as we were all very tired and so were all the other passangers.

We boarded our coaches and we were on our way on a 1 hour journey to the other side of the island to stay at a hotel over night (or should i say over morning because by this time it was about 5:45am)!

We arrived at out hotel which was a complete shocker because it was a 5* Sheraton hotel! We were gobsmacked! So we were put up for the night in one of the best hotels in the world! The rep told us that we would have a meeting at 12pm and we would be told when our flight was going to depart. We got about 2hrs 30mins sleep and we had to get up because breakfast was about to be served. Believe me it was a VERY long day. We had the meeting as promised at 12pm and were told that the coaches were coming to pick us up at 4pm and we would definitely be flying by 6pm. Somebody asked what the technical difficulty was on the plane and we were told that the front wheel had buckled and an engineer was flying over from the U.K to fix the problem...

We got on the coach as promised by 4pm and we arrived at the airport by 5pm to be departing at 6pm. By 6pm we had now been delayed for 15 hours which is the maximum time an airline company is allowed to delay you for without compensating you. We were promised that we would be departing at 6pm but we didn't board the plane until 6:40pm and we finally departed at 7:15pm. "Hurray!!!" was the cheer from all the passangers as we were told that we were finally boarding. We boarded the plane and my dad asked what the problem with the plane was and the steward told us that there was a problem with the thrust in one of the engines (which is what gets you into the air) so now we all started to worry because we had been told that there was only a problem with the fromt wheel. We were very angry that we had been told something different.

We arrived home almost 20 hours later that we should have. My mum wrote to Air 2000 with a complaint about the 16 hour delay and we soon hope to receive compensation as we were horrified with the differing excuses etc..

I hope I have given you a good insight into what can really go on behind the scenes of what is supposed to be an airline with high standards of customer care. This, we did not receive!

Do yourself a favour and prepare yourself while flying with Air 2000.