A group of passengers who were left stranded in New York by flyglobespan airline are to take legal action against the company, an attorney representing the group has said.
Des O'Carroll, an Irish-born New York attorney who was one of the passengers stranded for days at JFK airport, said that he intends to begin legal proceedings later this week. He said that he had spoken to many passengers who were due to fly from JFK to Knock, Co Mayo last Thursday and said none had any confidence left in the company.
Flyglobespan has said that it is to fly passengers to Ireland tonight, the first such flight in a week. Most of the people on that flight will be passengers who were unable to board last Sunday night.
Many people made their way back to Ireland with other airlines since a Boeing 757 aircraft developed technical problems at JFK on Thursday.
Flyglobespan cancelled yesterday's flights between Knock and JFK to allow engineers continue to work on the grounded aircraft in New York. The company said it was hopeful that all services between Ireland West Airport Knock and JFK would be back to normal by tomorrow.
Mr O'Carroll, who paid for a separate flight home with Delta Airlines, said that he had some matters to attend to in Dublin over the next two days and would then begin the lawsuit on behalf of flyglobespan passengers.
Flyglobespan spokesman Crawford Brankin said that he had not yet heard about the lawsuit, but said he understood passengers' anger.
"Basically, we can well understand people's anger, but we have apologised, put people up in hotels and repatriated them as best we could." On the lawsuit, he said he understood that people "must do as they see fit".
He said that the plane that was grounded last Thursday evening because of technical problems would be flying tonight and that the company had flown four engineers in from the UK to solve the problem.
The airline cancelled yesterday's flights between Knock and JFK to allow engineers continue to work on the grounded aircraft in New York .
The company says it is hopeful that all services between Ireland West Airport and JFK will be back to normal by tomorrow.
A group of 146 passengers due to travel with the airline from Knock to New York on Sunday finally got away with other airlines from Shannon and Dublin on Monday. The plane on which they were scheduled to travel is the one grounded by the engineering difficulty in JFK.