Flight Cancelled Due To Pilot's Expired License

That ultra-cheap air fare may come with unintended consequences. Just as the Starkie family.

The Times of London reports British low-cost-carrier easyJet agreed to pay US$3,360 to the British family after the carrier stranded them in the Canary Islands for five days last month... forcing them to make alternate, and expensive, arrangements.

Nicola and Robert Starkie, and their two yound daughters, were among 25 passengers who were greeted with a rude awakening when the arrived in Las Palmas for their July 28 flight home to Bristol -- easyJet's pilot had forgotten to renew his certification, and there was no room for them on the next available flight.

"It was 11:45pm when we found out that we weren’t going home because the pilot wasn’t allowed to fly," Nicola Starkie recounted. "There was a flight on Wednesday but there were no seats for us. We were told we might be able to get home on the Saturday flight, even though there was no guarantee."

To add insult to injury, easyJet would only agree to only pay for a hotel for two nights. That made things especially difficult for the Starkies, who had made the trip for a friend's weddding, while they were also in the middle of moving to a new home.

"It was a very traumatic way to end the holiday," added Mrs. Starkie, who is five months pregnant. "I spent two days crying; easyJet just dumped us there and left us. It is absolutely diabolical. We felt abandoned."

The Starkies eventually found seats on another carrier, to the tune of US$758. As for easyJet, the carrier told the family they had no right to expect compensation, other than for the price of their tickets... despite European Union guidelines calling for additional reimbursement. So, after they returned home, the Starkies went to the media with their story.

It worked. Last week, easyJet apologized for its "administration error" in grounding the flight, saying it was not the carrier's responsibility to check whether its pilots stayed current. Nevertheless, the airline agreed to reimburse the family for their trouble -- about US$600 per passenger as per EU guidelines, plus the cost of the family's return trip home and for their hotel rooms.

The Starkies may be lucky. Though strict in calling for reimbursements for delayed or booted passengers, the EU also exempts low-cost airlines from those guidelines in the event of extraordinary circumstances -- including bad weather, technical problems, or if a security matter cancels the flight.

Ryanair, another low-cost airline serving Europe, recently employed that very loophole to cancel thousands of tickets bought through third-party price comparison sites, stating such 'screen-scraping' services are illegal.

FMI: www.easyjet.co.uk