Small children, families, the elderly, cancer patients, are 200 Italians blocked for three days at Funchal airport Madeirain Portugalafter their flight Wizzair was cancelled due to weather conditions. After the first cancellation and subsequent rescheduling for the next day – on a plane that never took off – now passengers are reporting that they were completely abandoned to themselves.
The report also reached IlfattoQuotidiano.it and online you see posts and videos of complaint And request for help by passengers stranded due to a situation that is becoming unsustainable. “We were due back on Thursday August 15th at 19.40 with WizzAir. That day, due to adverse weather conditions, our flight was cancelled. They rescheduled us for the following day, Friday 16 August at 11.15, so yesterday”, it says. But the flight did not take off yesterday either: “From 11 they moved our flight to 13, then to 15, then to 18 and then they delete it again and permanentlyyesterday there was no bad weather and all the other flights left”. Not only that, the stranded passengers complain that they had no assistance either in finding a flight that could take them home or in finding accommodation: “We were left without shelter, without food, without water. Only after insistence were some of us issued a voucher 5€ that should have been enough for us to live on 16 hoursconsidering the very high prices at the airports. We slept on the groundwe couldn’t wash ourselves.”
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs asked the General Command of the Guardia di Finanza, through its command at Fiumicino airport, to intervene quickly on the airline Wizzair, we read in a note from the Farnesina which underlines that the Italian Government has endorsed the request of the citizens who ask for be put on a new flight as soon as possibleThe Italian Ambassador to Portugal Claudio Miscia – the note adds – called some Italian citizens present at the airport to update them on the latest actions taken to accelerate the airline’s response, while the honorary consul in Madeira remains at the airport, in contact with the passengers still present to provide the necessary assistance.
Wizzair reportedly contacted passengers only by means of a recorded disc. Those who managed to speak to an operator were told that there were only two options: “Either a refund or a flight relocation. to August 29th“. “We called the embassy, the Farnesina, the Italian armed forces, the ENAC, no one helped us and we are stuck here – the complaint continues – for yesterday we were given 2 vouchers (12 and 28 euros) and only at 21 they found us a place in a hotel, very far away at that. We ask that this news be made known, so that someone will mobilize to help us“.
Among those who were left on the ground, there would also be cancer patients and people who need medicines and assistance. The wife of Gianluca Scarponi, one of the “fragile” passengers who remained stranded, declared to Republic that the husband ” he has a very serious tumor and we had taken this week to travel together with our children. But on Monday he has to start the tests and chemotherapy again. For a cancer patient stopping treatment is a very serious thing“. Scarponi made this known to everyone, including the honorary consul of Madeira – reports The Republic – but the situation has not yet been resolved. Few have managed to find a place – what’s more at a very high price – on other airlines’ planes, most of which are already full. The “solution” of August 29, then, is completely impractical and irreconcilable with health emergencies, work commitments and skyrocketing prices in high season.
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