Daughters visited cockpit on flight stranded on tarmac for hours

Mother tells how her two young daughters visited cockpit on Gatwick-bound flight from Croatia that was stranded on tarmac for more than three hours amid air traffic control chaos

The captain provided a wonderful 15 minutes of respite from the delay boredom
Our daughters asked her about the job of just about every nob in the cockpit

As one of the 150 passengers on Easyjet’s 11.15am Gatwick bound flight from Dubrovnik yesterday, I first became concerned when the Captain’s opening words over the intercom were ‘Ladies and Gentleman, I’m afraid I have some bad news to share…’

I had no idea quite how bad that news was going to get for us and thousands of other plane travellers.

Details slowly trickled down the aisle of huge numbers of flights being cancelled or massively delayed. We resigned ourselves to landing in the UK sometime in the small hours of Tuesday if we got home at all.

Refreshing the Easyjet app every few minutes, I was desperate for a chink of good news but the information online and from our communicative crew only got worse. Feeling pretty helpless and hopeless, I tried to work out how to keep my husband Andy’s two grown up sons and our two young daughters fed and watered for another 12 hours with our emergency rations of Kinder Buenos having already been depleted.

The stewards worked hard to keep us refreshed and went the extra mile with the kids on board giving them all an opportunity to sit in the First Officer’s seat. The captain, Evelyn, provided a wonderful 15 minutes of respite from the boredom of the delay as our daughters asked her about the job of just about every nob in the cockpit.

The stewards worked hard to keep us refreshed and went the extra mile with the kids on board giving them all an opportunity to sit in the First Officer’s seat. The captain provided a wonderful 15 minutes of respite from the boredom of the delay as our daughters asked her about the job of just about every nob in the cockpit

With the ETA at Gatwick past midnight – nearly 12 hours after our scheduled arrival – we felt huge relief when Captain Evelyn decided to let us disembark. Pictured: Ellie Fennell, her husband Andy and their daughter

By 14.00, after 3 hours sat on the sauna-come-plane, both the on-board supply of drinks and the kids’ iPad batteries were at worryingly low levels.

With the ETA at Gatwick past midnight – nearly 12 hours after our scheduled arrival – we felt huge relief when Captain Evelyn decided to let us disembark.

She explained that her plan was to secure a last-minute opportunity to fly by ‘jumping on’ landing slots opening up through other flights being cancelled. We would ALL need to be on board and the plane moving within 15 minutes of hearing a boarding announcement.

With refreshing honesty, she told us that just one of us being late back would mean all 150 of us being stuck in Dubrovnik. Could we rely on our fellow passengers to hot-foot it back in time??

Fingers crossed for a speedy return, my family and I set off to forage for sustenance and much needed plug sockets. As the minutes turned to hours, the teeming terminal started to feel more like a badly run summer festival than a holiday hub.

With the solitary cafe running out of cardboard croissants, rubbish bins over-flowing, travellers of all ages resting on every horizontal surface and loo queues seemingly stretching for miles, we felt pretty desperate.

The captain explained that her plan was to secure a last-minute opportunity to fly by ‘jumping on’ landing slots opening up through other flights being cancelled. We would ALL need to be on board and the plane moving within 15 minutes of hearing a boarding announcement. Ellie and her daughter are pictured during the holiday

I’ve never seen such comaraderie amongst a group of exhausted, grumpy strangers as everyone helped scoop up bags, buggies and other travel detritus to get us all back on our way home. Captain Evelyn was there on the tarmac in her high vis vest corralling us all to board as safely and speedily as possible. Ellie and her daughter are pictured in Croatia

Then I recognised a fellow Gatwick-bound passenger swiftly packing up her belongings and making a move for the stairs. A quick Easyjet app refresh revealed that a slot had been secured for us to depart at 17.05 – just a matter of minutes later.

I’ve never seen such comaraderie amongst a group of exhausted, grumpy strangers as everyone helped scoop up bags, buggies and other travel detritus to get us all back on our way home.

Captain Evelyn was there on the tarmac in her high vis vest corralling us all to board as safely and speedily as possible. As empty seats gradually filled, hopes were raised until finally we heard ‘Cabin crew – boarding is complete.’ A huge round of relief-fuelled applause followed.

Our plane was relegated to the ‘sin bin’ at Gatwick – an almost off airport area reserved for very late arrivals meaning more bus-based delays but we were on UK soil at last. Finally arriving home at 22.30 yesterday, we realise now that we are lucky to be one of the fortunate families who actually returned to our own beds last night.

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