Air Vanuatu was forced to apologize to passengers affected by Thursday evening’s disruption to its Vila-Santo-Vila service after a post in the Facebook (FB) social media complained about the treatment of the passengers and those affected.
In its own Facebook account, Air Vanuatu had to come out and make the apology and said “unfortunately the service was delayed then cancelled due to engineering requirements”.
The FB post alleged that passengers had to wait until 10pm Thursday when they were told the flight was cancelled and passengers were then accommodated at hotels at Air Vanuatu expenses.
“Air Vanuatu’s disruption management policy is industry standard.
“We offer assistance to all passengers away from their home ports (domestic and international) if our engineering requirements have disrupted their travel plans,” the company says in its post.
“It is Air Vanuatu’s preference to accommodate all disrupted passengers away from their home ports in the one location for ease of communication, however last night that was not possible due to limited hotel room availability.”
The company apologized for any inconvenience caused and said it would refund airfares for those passengers wishing to get refunds.
Air Vanuatu also apolozised to its earlier posters, due to a glitch causing their original post and said, “No hotel in Port Vila could accommodate all of our passengers due to limited room availability.
“We therefore had to use more than one hotel — one of those was not able to provide meals.
“As such, we will be crediting those passengers with a voucher and ask them to contact our office in Port Vila.”