A Warwick couple is among passengers stuck in Cork, Ireland, until Tuesday after their scheduled Norwegian Air Shuttle flight home to T.F. Green Airport on Thursday was canceled due to the nor'easter.
A Warwick couple is among passengers stuck in Cork, Ireland, until Tuesday after their scheduled Norwegian Air Shuttle flight home to T.F. Green Airport on Thursday was canceled due to the nor'easter.
Joseph and Nicole Gugliuzza were among hundreds stranded — "with nowhere to turn and no one willing to help," Joseph Gugliuzza told The Providence Journal in a series of emails. He was reluctant to speak on his cellphone because he had already used plenty of international minutes on hold and talking with the airline.
"They made us stay 5 extra days because they didn't want to switch us to another airline," Joseph Gugliuzza wrote. "They also refused to reimburse us for hotel/rent-a-car/meals."
He didn't know why Norwegian wouldn't book them on another airline and said the company denied their requests to speak with a manager.
Norwegian's senior public relations manager, Réal Hamilton-Romeo, said in a brief interview Friday that the Cork-to-Providence flight had a capacity for 189 people, but she didn't know how many had booked the flight. She said some people had then made their own arrangements to fly back, and she didn't know how many remained stuck in Cork. She said the airline was doing all it could to get people to their destinations.
"Getting the operation back up after this ridiculously bad Northeast storm has been a bit more challenging than normal," Hamilton-Romeo said. She didn't know why the couple had to stay another five days, but said, "If that's what our customer service specialists have shared, I have to trust that's the best opportunity to get [them] home."
The issue may be what's known in the airline industry as co-sharing agreements — when airlines agree to book passengers on each other's flights in case of cancellations and delays.
At Mendez Travel Agency in Providence, travel agent Liset Thompson said they don't book customers on the low-cost Norwegian Air — because they believe it doesn't have co-sharing, or "what we would call any other airline coming to the rescue."
Mendez Travel also doesn't book on other discount airlines that have recently announced flights to and from T.F. Green, she said, because it hasn't conducted enough research into Frontier, Allegiant and OneJet. If an airline won't help out the client, that's reason for the agency to steer clear of booking its flights, she said.
From Ireland, Gugliuzza said Norwegian offered to fly the couple back to the United States on Sunday — into Newburgh, New York, a destination the couple's research showed would be difficult, might cost more than $1,000 and would get them back Monday morning, just a day before Norwegian's next direct flight back to Rhode Island.
"It looked like we would have to hop on four different trains, including a ferry, just to get back into Rhode Island," he wrote. "In the end, the time and stress it would take to get from Newburgh to Rhode Island with all of our luggage as well as the money it would cost (with no guarantee of refund) seemed a bit outrageous."
Late Friday, Hamilton-Romeo emailed that Norwegian has "a rescue flight planned from Providence to Cork" on Saturday, but she didn't share details about whether all stranded passengers may get home sooner than Tuesday.
The couple's two round-trip flights from Green to Cork totaled about $700, Gugliuzza said.
Such deals helped convince Providence residents Robert and Elaine Sandy, who are retired, to book November flights on Norwegian from T.F. Green to Edinburgh, Scotland, the couple said in an interview Friday. But even with two round-trip tickets totaling $860, their experience with the airline has left Elaine Sandy saying she'd "never" fly Norwegian again.
Her husband isn't so sure. If he had no compelling reason to return on the scheduled day, the price might still convince him to fly Norwegian, he said — but certainly not for a "crucial business" trip.
For their trip, Robert Sandy said, "I knew going in that it was a low-cost airline, and if they only have two flights a week, there's no spare planes, no spare crews. If something goes wrong, they don't have the kind of resources that Southwest has to pull in another plane, pull in another crew."
The Providence couple's travel woes weren't weather-related.
The airline delayed their 10:35 p.m. flight until 4 a.m. the next day, due to what a Norwegian text message called "mandatory crew rest." But they'd have to go through airport security at Green before it closed at 11 p.m. and then wait there overnight. But then, for "operational reasons," the airline said they'd depart at 9 a.m. from Stewart International Airport in New York, about 60 miles north of Manhattan.
A customer service representative said they should meet at the ticket counter at 4 a.m. and a bus would take them there. But no one was waiting. Then, a chauffeur who could drive only 6 of 44 passengers arrived. A bus took 24 people and a later shuttle took some more but left about half a dozen people on the curb, the Sandys said.
"The worst part was leaving people standing in front of T.F. Green at 3 o'clock in the morning," Elaine Sandy said.
Once they got there, they had a wonderful vacation — and other Norwegian flights within Europe were "all fine," they said.
Norwegian's Hamilton-Romeo said she didn't know what happened with their November flight, and she couldn't research it Friday because snow-related issues were her top priority.
Meanwhile, Joseph and Nicole Gugliuzza were gearing up to miss work Monday and Tuesday. She's a school administrator in Providence and he's a videographer. In their latest email, at 6 p.m. Eastern time, they didn't know about any "rescue flight."
"Don’t get me wrong," Joseph Gugliuzza wrote. "We know how privileged we are to even be on vacation to begin with. We could be stuck in a worse place. Ireland is a beautiful country, and we had an amazing time here. But we just want to go home."
— kbramson@providencejournal.com
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On Twitter: @JournalKate