A group of 120 passengers spent eight bum-numbing hours on a low-cost airline with razor-thin seats that don’t recline, only to end up exactly where they started their endurance-like journey.
The unfortunate passengers had been hoping to fly with German low-cost airline Eurowings from Düsseldorf to Tromsø in Norway on Saturday, but what should have been an unremarkable flight of less than eight hours turned into a calamitous eight-hour flight to nowhere.
The flight started without any problems, departing Düsseldorf just nine minutes late at around 3 pm on March 15, but as the small Airbus A320 aircraft fitted out slimline seats and narrow, space-saving toilets was approaching Tromsø, the pilots were forced to make a one-hour detour to Rovaniemi in neighboring Finland.
The problem was that high winds were wreaking havoc in Tromsø, which is a notoriously difficult airport to land at due to challenging weather conditions.
Once on the ground in Rovaniemi, the passengers waited onboard their Eurowings plane while they waited for the weather to improve and refuel the aircraft, setting off an hour later for a second attempt at landing in Tromsø.
Despite their best attempts, however, the pilots discovered that the wind speeds had increased by the time they got back close to Tromsø and were over the maximum permitted speed.
At this point, the airline decided to call it a day and had the pilots head straight back to Düsseldorf, where the plane landed at around 11 pm.
“At the time of the planned arrival of flight EW9250, the airport TOS reported winds above a maximum limit to carry out a safe landing, which led to a diversion to Rovaniemi,” a Eurowings spokesperson confirmed.
The statement continued: “There, the crew and 120 passengers waited about an hour for the weather to improve and then took course again on TOS. Unfortunately, the second attempt also failed due to the weather, so the pilots decided to fly back to the base in Düsseldorf.”
Eurowings said it provided hotel accommodation for the unlucky passengers and then reattempted the flight the following morning. Thankfully, the third attempt went off without a hitch, and they landed in Tromsø at around 11 am on Sunday – just 20 hours behind schedule.
Interestingly, it looks like the weather then took another turn for the worse, and the return flight ended up being delayed on the ground for nearly two hours before it could make a safe departure for the flight back to Germany.
