The delayed Monarch flight that illustrates how airline compensation rules are not fit for purpose

What are your rights when it all goes wrong

The plane eventually took off from Faro to Birmingham 30 hours late

As day turned to night last weekend at Faro airport in Portugal, I wasn’t one of the 193 passengers who were hoping to be in Birmingham rather than the Algarve. But thanks to the marvels of social media, I felt as though I was in the departure lounge waiting for Monarch flight ZB407 on Saturday evening.

The plane was due to leave at 5.35pm, bringing everyone to Birmingham by 8.25pm in good time to get home. But at 9pm, Professor Robert Harris tweeted that they were still on the ground in Portugal.

The inbound Airbus A321 finally arrived just before 10pm, five hours late. Departure had been delayed because of a failure of check-in systems at Birmingham airport: “Manual check-in was in operation for all Monarch’s departing flights on that day,” says the airline.

Aviation is a high-stakes business. I don't know what the passengers paid for the privilege of flying 1,100 miles from the Algarve to the West Midlands, but I estimate it was £200-250 each on average – so let’s assume a total of £40,000 in revenue for the airline. But because of the five-hour delay, the passengers waiting in Faro were already entitled to €400 (£300) each in compensation. Also entitled to the cash were the people who had spent the afternoon in Birmingham and the evening in flight, rather than sipping cerveja at a waterside café. So whatever Monarch had hoped to earn from the flight at one of the busiest days of the year had already been wiped out.

Perhaps that explains the airline’s reluctance to be overly generous in observing the EU rules on passenger care. For a delay of three-hours plus on a flight of that length, the airline is obliged to provide meals as appropriate. Professor Harris confirmed that Monarch had done so – after a fashion: “Monarch offered €6 food vouchers. A sandwich & water is €9.”

Bom apetite, as they say in Portugal, though not necessarily in the Faro airport departure lounge.

You would expect the aircraft to be turned around within an hour, meaning an 11pm departure and an annoyingly late 2am arrival into Birmingham. But things took a turn for the worse, with the passengers sitting on board for 90 minutes while a technical fault was addressed.

“It was then reported that there was a problem with the emergency lighting over one of the exit doors,” says a Monarch spokesperson. “An engineer attended the aircraft but was unable to resolve the issue. Because the airport was then due to close, there was no choice but to source hotels and night-stop the customers.”

While passengers do not need minimum rest before a flight, the crew certainly do – and as a result of the stipulations, the flight could not be rearranged until 4pm on Sunday. Some of us would see the chance of an extra 24 hours in Portugal, at the airline’s expense, as a positive. But that all depends how the delay is handled.

The Monarch statement makes it sound a breeze: “One of the Monarch overseas team was on hand to settle the customers into the hotel – Hotel Ria Park.” Professor Harris, however, had a rather different view: “Tom Hanks chose to live in a terminal, my family did not. @Monarch doing zero to get us home” He tweeted a picture of his 11-year-old daughter in tears, "at 04.30 outside closed airport”.

The airline insists he was mistaken. “Two Monarch representatives were with the customers during the initial disruption and confirmed that all customers were safely at the hotel by 0430,” says a spokesperson.

By now Monarch was probably £100,000 out of pocket – and subtracting a plane from the fleet for 24 hours may well have had knock-on costs. The incident happened at the worst possible time: the Saturday of a bank-holiday weekend, when every aircraft and staff member is already deployed, making arranging an extra flight very difficult.

Worse was to come on Sunday afternoon. The vehicle taking the flight crew to the airport was involved in a road accident, and two members of cabin crew were taken to hospital for treatment. The flight could not operate, and Monarch’s bank balance took another hit of perhaps £30,000 when it chartered a Thomas Cook jet to fly out from Manchester to pick up the stranded passengers.

They eventually took off from Faro 30 hours late – shortly after Clare Foster had tweeted: "@Monarch flight ZB407 is getting beyond a joke now. Some communication resembling the truth would be helpful."

While I can't judge the discrepancies between the airline’s version of events and the passengers’ accounts, I can say that this dismal sequence of misfortunes shows how ridiculous are the European rules on compensation.

There is no difference in the sum awarded, £350, for a relatively minor inconvenience compared with a massive wrecked weekend of distress and disruption. That is also why the ZB407 passengers suffered the extra indignity of seeing a perfectly serviceable Monarch plane land from Birmingham on Sunday afternoon, pick up people who’d checked in 24 hours later than them at Faro airport, and fly them punctually home.

Had the airline decided that the disrupted passengers deserved to be flown back first, it would have been liable to pay out another plane load of compensation for the Sunday passengers. If rules discourage airlines from sharing the pain, then they are not fit for purpose. And while the regulations are being redrawn for a post-Brexit era, they need sharpening up to make sure every airline has a plan in place to care properly for passengers when things go wrong.