An Aer Lingus plane on the apron at Dublin Airport yesterday morning Sam Boal / Rollingnews.ie Sam Boal / Rollingnews.ie / Rollingnews.ie

A NUMBER OF passengers have been left stranded on the island of Lanzarote after a scheduled Aer Lingus flight diverted to another island last night.

Flight EI877, due to serve Cork from Lanzarote, was scheduled to leave the Canary island yesterday evening at 6.05pm.

The flight was forced to divert to Fuerteventura due to high winds at Lanzarote’s Arrecife Airport.

The inbound passengers who had been heading for Lanzarote were brought to their destination late last night by a combination of bus and ferry.

“I spoke to Minister (for Transport Shane) Ross who has intervened and has come back to me to confirm that Aer Lingus are hiring a Boeing 767 to fly to Lanzarote on Monday to bring the stranded passengers home,” said independent TD for Kerry Michael Healy Rae.

I know all this should seem standard, but I am disappointed with the lack of assistance from Aer Lingus up until now.

Last night’s flight aircraft could not continue to Arrecife as “the crew would have exceeded their hours and not been able to return Cork with the aircraft, which would have caused even more disruption for guests at Cork this morning”, an Aer Lingus spokesperson said.

“Some of the guests due to travel from Arrecife to Cork were provided with hotel accommodation but our handling agent could not secure accommodation for all and as a result some guests unfortunately remained in the airport overnight,” the spokesperson said.

We are now seeking to get these guests back to Ireland as soon as possible and have secured a hire-in aircraft for tomorrow (Monday 5 March) which will operate from Arrecife to Dublin.

That flight will leave Lanzarote at 1.30pm local time, arriving back in Dublin at 5.45pm tomorrow evening.

“Guests in Arrecife can be switched onto this flight by contacting our handling agent at the airport. Our handling agent is also proactively contacting guests to book them onto this flight,” the spokesperson said.

We apologise sincerely for the inconvenience caused by this flight cancellation which came at a time when our entire team are focused on resolving this and the other guests’ service issues arising from the severe weather event in Ireland and across our network.

TheJournal.ie has contacted the Department of Transport for comment on this matter.

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