Passengers call 160-mile diversion from Southampton airport 'travel hell'

Passengers on a flight diverted to Nottingham after an abandoned landing in Southampton branded their experience as ‘travel hell,’ arriving in the city eight hours after expected.

Blue Islands’ flight from Guernsey to the south coast city was supposed to leave at 6.20pm but was delayed 40 minutes before it even got off the ground.

The plane passed over Hythe at 7.24pm but the first attempted landing at Southampton was abandoned due to a weather-related issue.

After circling over the Isle of Wight and Beaulieu, it eventually diverted and started a journey to Nottingham at 8.28pm.

One male passenger, who asked not to be named, said he knew there would be problems as soon as the plane could not stick the first landing.

“I could tell looking out of the window and seeing the fog that it was going to be a long night,” the male passenger said.

READ MORE: Channel Islands flight forced to land 160 miles away from Southampton airport

The plane eventually landed at East Midlands Airport just before 9pm.

From here, passengers would have to make the 160-mile journey back down to Southampton Airport, and a coach was arranged to take travellers down south.

But it took two and a half hours for this transport to arrive, the Daily Echo understands.

The male passenger said: “This was when I realised that this was going to be a horror show, some sort of travel hell.

“Two and a half hours for the coach to get to Nottingham, then three hours back down to Southampton, even with no traffic that’s still a ridiculous amount of wasted time.”

READ MORE: Passengers stuck on plane for two hours after diverting from Southampton

This was bad enough for passengers, but another person on board confirmed to the Echo that the coach driver got lost driving back to Southampton, tacking an extra 30 minutes onto the journey.

“We were more in Andover than Allbrook,” the male passenger quoted above said.

“The airline isn’t at fault for that though, it was late at night and everyone was tired, going the wrong way can be forgiven in that circumstance.”

Multiple people riding the coach told the Echo that they did not arrive in Southampton until 3.15am.

But another passenger on the flight, who asked to remain anonymous, said they had ‘no complaints about how the situation was handled.’

“Obviously I would have preferred not to be stuck on the plane for an extra couple of hours and not have to get a three-hour coach back, but the weather is the weather," they said.