A Vueling Airlines flight to Florence took off from Gatwick Airport ’empty’ because staff shortages meant passengers couldn’t get to the gate on time. The pilots of Vueling flight VY6209 waited for more than two hours past the scheduled departure before deciding to leave all the passengers behind in order to make it to Florence before air traffic restrictions were imposed.
According to Aerolopa, the Vueling operated Airbus A319 aircraft had a total passenger capacity of 144 in an all-economy configuration. Passengers booked on the flight blasted the Barcelona-based carrier for leaving without them because of staff shortages at the West Sussex airport.
The flight was originally scheduled to depart at 8:20 om on Monday but the plane didn’t take off until gone 10:30 pm. The 15-year-old aircraft eventually arrived in Florence at 1:12 am but didn’t fly again until Tuesday afternoon when it returned to London Gatwick.
Nisha Gupta, 32, was booked to fly on VY6209 on Monday but she told the PA news agency that she was forced to queue for four hours to just check in her luggage at the Vueling counter.
When Nisha eventually made it to the boarding gate, she says passengers were told there wasn’t enough staff available to board them on the flight quickly enough so the pilots had taken the decision to leave without all of them.
Nisha claims just three members of Vueling staff appeared to be working the entire time she was at the airport.
On Tuesday evening, Danny Lee took to Twitter to complain of long waits to check in luggage at the Vueling counter for the second day in a row. Danny slammed the airline, vowing to “never again” fly with Vueling.
Like a number of airports across Europe, Gatwick has been suffering from sporadic staff shortages. Some of the shortages are because the airline industry is struggling to recruit staff fast enough to keep up with passenger demand, while COVID-related absences have caused additional pressure.
Last week, staff shortages were the cause of travel chaos for easyJet passengers at Gatwick but the airline is now proactively cancelling dozens of flights per day in order to relieve pressure.
Some European airports including Amsterdam Schipol and Dublin are also reporting issues recruiting enough security staff to keep up with demand and disruption is expected to stretch well into the summer.
