11/08/2019 16:05

Russian Tourists Spent Christmas Night at the Airport

On January 9th Transaero gave official comments on the situation with UN 650 flight delay. Sergey Bikhal, Press Secretary of the Airline stated as follows: 'the incoming companies were informed in advance about the initial delay of the flight from 11.15 p.m. on January 6th until 5.40 a.m. on January 7th. They were supposed to contact tour operating companies. At the moment it is difficult to judge how well they followed that recommendation. Check-in in Egypt started as soon as the flight left Moscow at 12.30 p.m. However, when the aircraft arrived at the destination and was sent to preflight check some fault was detected in one of the blocks. Therefore, Transaero oper-center instructed the Egyptian serving company to accommodate the tourists in a hotel that was not done. The internal investigation will find out why it happened’. Meanwhile, the witness of the situation at the Airport explained that the reason the tourists were not accommodated was that they had gone through the passport control and gave away their immigration cards, while without this document they could not leave the transit zone. The version about customs formalities was confirmed by Sergey Bikhal: ‘the security check in Hurgada is a very difficult procedure. It would be very time consuming for so many passengers to go through it again’. Although the passengers of the delayed flight spent in a badly-conditioned space more then 24 hours, none of them has complained to the company that consolidated the flight, representatives of CAPITAL TOUR said. ‘Apparently, the passengers themselves did not consider the situation to be as serious as journalists did. Moreover, at the beginning of January longer delays took place’, commented Inna Beltyukova, General Director of CAPITAL TOUR. Furthermore, Transaero Press Service pointed out that the Airline paid compensations for lost domestic transfers to tourists from regional Russian cities. ‘Each of them has a right for a compensation that they can receive in Transaero office. As for the delay, the problem could not be solved in shorter time. Besides, national holiday in Egypt affected the situation – the reserved aircraft could not arrive in time. We did everything that depended on the airline’, summarized Sergey Bikhal.