Per ardua ad Astraeus – now via Bruce Dickinson

Like most people, I was astounded to read that Bruce Dickinson, lead singer with Iron Maiden, is also a pilot with Astraeus Airlines. I mean … Astraeus! How could he? The airline that doesn’t know its Assisi from its Elba.

Bruce has been helping to bring stranded XL passengers back to Britain, giving Astraeus some flattering publicity it doesn’t deserve.

Let me tell you about Astraeus. No, on second thoughts, as promised last week, let my mate Frank tell you about Astraeus and Thomas Holidays, and how they combined to ruin a dream last year.

This is his account. It’s longish but well worth the read:

WE’D had the family gathering, we’d done all the jokes (‘even Crippen didn’t get 40 years!’), and now we had a blissful holiday to come to celebrate our ruby wedding anniversary.

A four-star hotel perched on a hill with glorious views over Lake Garda in Italy. A week of relaxation and a little gentle sight-seeing away from the rigours of work. Just me and my child-bride, maybe getting a feel for eventual retirement.

Per ardua ad astra. Only this turned out to be Per ardua ad Astraeus.

We had booked with Thomson Lakes & Mountains back in December; a comfortable 1.30pm Saturday flight in early June that meant we could pootle down to Gatwick without having to get up before the dawn chorus. In April I pre-booked my parking at Gatwick South. Barely a week later we received a letter from Thomson telling us that our outbound flight had been changed from a Thomson aircraft to an Astraeus plane, that it would leave at 6.15 am on the Saturday, and from the North Terminal.

I uttered the odd expletive, calmed down, cancelled the parking (fortunately at no charge), rearranged new parking, and booked a hotel room just off the airport for the Friday night. Trying to ignore the fact that we’d now have to check in at some ungodly hour apparently called 4.15 am, we reasoned that we would at least get almost a full day in the resort (should be at Limone by about midday instead of around 7pm).

The following week we received another letter from Thomson, adding that the return flight had been revised: leaving Verona at 6pm instead of 5pm.

No bother. Garda, here we come.

June 2, bloody early: No sooner had we joined the queue heading for the Astraeus check-in points than the first strange rumour reached us. There was some sort of delay. Then the next: Astraeus didn’t have a crew for flight AEU 221. Swiftly followed by: they are trying to get another plane/crew from Shannon in Ireland.

The note we were handed at check-in informed us that indeed there was “a lack of a full Astraeus crew” and that the replacement “sub-service aircraft” from another UK carrier had been cancelled because of engineering problems with that carrier’s fleet. The ray of good news was that there should be an aircraft available for a 7.45pm departure and meanwhile we would be provided with breakfast and a day room at the Hilton Hotel on the airport.

Well, whoopee-doo.

Let me tell you – the Hilton’s breakfast isn’t worth £18. I’m glad Astraeus were footing the bill. We were also given £10 vouchers each for lunch – at any of the airport outlets, but not at the Hilton, which was a small mercy.

June 2, 5.30pm: We had already been at Gatwick more than 12 hours. Our feet were aching and our brains were numb. My child bride and I hadn’t flown abroad since the post-bombing strict security measures were introduced, so we were probably preoccupied with our little plastic bags full of potions and lotions as we approached Departures. We didn’t twig on why some passengers weren’t being allowed past the first desk – until we were asked to join them.

Departures staff hadn’t received notification of flight AEU 221. No one with a boarding card bearing that number could go airside. So before long about 150 of us were milling around one end of Departures, berating Thomson, Astraeus, and the flight handler Aviance, and trying to contact representatives of any of the guilty parties.

Before long airport police were summoned to move us along. We were “too near a fire exit” was the official excuse – but we weren’t. And we weren’t moving. It was all part of the fobbing-off process that went on for the next four hours, while Astraeus apparently tried to secure an aircraft to take us to Verona.

The Astraeus and Aviance people were undoubtedly underlings doing their best; the British Airports Authority chap did his darnedest but obviously couldn’t conjure up a Boeing from the ether; the representative from Thomson was nowhere to be seen.

A Welsh firebrand of a woman in the best Aneurin Bevan tradition – but whose negotiation skills had been honed as a Marks and Spencer manager rather than forged in the mines – suddenly became our semi-official spokeswoman. She gave as good as she got, but you can’t beat an opponent if he won’t climb in the ring.

About half a dozen times we were told to “give it 10 more minutes” and there would be definitive news on whether attempts to secure an aircraft had been successful. Finally, some time after 9pm (time had lost all meaning by then), they admitted it: there would be no flight for us on Saturday June 2. Buses were being arranged to take us to a hotel for the night, and meanwhile we could retrieve our luggage. We would be picked up at about 10 am the following morning for a rearranged flight at about 3pm.

The buses came along after midnight, by which time we were weary and footsore beyond belief. They took us to a hotel at Heathrow! My child bride and I were halfway back to our home in Oxfordshire. If our car hadn’t been parked at Gatwick we might well have joined the handful of very hot-and-bothered passengers who called it a day – a very long day – and went home.

I was so tired as I got ready for bed at about 2am that I dropped one of my contact lenses on the floor, trod on it, and shattered it. Sod it! That’s another £75 Thomson owe me …

June 3, 8.30 am: Very good breakfast at the Park Inn. 10.15am: coach back to Gatwick. High noon: check in again. 2.30pm: plane lifts off the tarmac. Hallelujah!

We are only 33 hours late for our holiday.

The hotel – the Panorama at Limone – lived up to its name and its reputation. There were stunning views from our room, the dining room, the terraces, the pool, the lift, the loo even! The weather was mixed, but we didn’t mind too much. It meant we could do a lot of walking – which we thoroughly enjoyed – that would have been impossible in a heatwave. The only thing missing was the anniversary “fruit basket or flowers” Thomson promised when we booked. Another triumph for its organisational skills.

June 9, 12.50pm: Coach arrives on time to take us back to Verona for our flight home, which was either 6pm or 7pm, but we were getting used to Astraeus Flexitime. Or were we? The young obligatorily blonde rep who stepped off to greet us was obviously nervous, and with good reason. She was sorry to tell us that the return flight would be delayed – perhaps 9 or 10pm. Perhaps a bit later …

Meanwhile, we would be taken to a hotel on the outskirts of Verona where we would be made comfortable until our flight. Comfortable! We were incandescent. But, of course, we had no choice but to go.

On the way we teamed up with other angry Astraeus refugees, including the Welsh firebrand. Many spleens were vented, especially when they started dishing out free water – one bottle per couple, not one each. That was soon resolved, but the air was still hot and sticky, mainly with barely suppressed rage that we had yet again been ambushed by the cowboys.

But suddenly there was a difference. There was a senior Thomson rep there, and then Thomson’s general manager in Italy, one Guiseppe Savastrano. If ever anyone deserved to be a general manager, Guiseppe did. Speaking immaculate if vowel-strangled English, he patiently and politely answered all our questions, promised us dinner in the hotel, coaches to the airport to check in about 9.30pm, and then a flight leaving about 2am on Sunday.

We were sceptical at first – would Verona airport allow planes to take off at that time of the morning?; would Gatwick allow us to land at 3am UK time? – but he won us over. The meal was good. And afterwards some of us took off our socks, rolled up our trousers, and refreshed our hot, sweaty feet in the hotel pool. Glorious.

June 10, 2am: Take-off from Verona. 3.50am: land at Gatwick. 4.30am: stump up for extra day’s parking at Gatwick and get on the road. 6am: arrive home and (first things first) check how things are growing in the garden. Roses out and looking wonderful. 6.30am: flop into bed. 10.30am. wake up, unable to sleep any more.

First time we’ve been jetlagged after a two-hour flight …

God, we could do with a holiday.