25 Apr 2010 3:13 PM:

Hi Donna.  We were not on the flight you mentioned but had a similar experience on Wednesday evening from Tenerife to Birmingham on the ZB933.  Someone from Monarch had confirmed us on the flight ZB9933, when we arrived at the airpoirt this flight did not exist and we were not on a passenger list for the ZB933.  They were just taking passengers scheduled to leave that day.  We were not the only ones.  Several people had received text msgs from Monarch confirming they were on the flight and to get to the airport.  One lady showed me her print out confirming her family was on the flight, others had received notes shoved under their doors by hotel staff informing them that they were on the flight.  None of us were.  We got some of the last seats on the flight because we have a young family, the younger your children the more chance you had of getting on.  Once we were on the flight I spoke to some Monarch stewardess who believed that the flight they had been asked to crew at short notice WAS the ZB9933, a rescue place bringing back stranded passengers.  I said it was not, that 90% of the passengers on this plane were due to fly home that day.  Unbelievably, the stewardess at the back of the plane believed that this was a scheduled flight only - so even their staff didn't have a clue what was going on.  In essence the flight codes that Monarch displayed on their website with an additional 9 prefixing the old flight number was meant to be a rescue flight, but these flights did not exist.  We were essentially treated as standby passengers, not stranded passengers.

Thread: Monarch flight chaos - information required

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