Presumably some of those people, who are traveling AWAY from their homes, could just leave the airport and go home for a week, no? And couldn’t some of them, who are traveling TO their homes, go back to the relatives or friends they were visiting? That would just leave the people who were not staying with anyone. I mean, you aren’t required to stay at the airport for a week.
As many people already stated, the biggest problem, especially in hubs like Frankfurt and Heathrow, are connecting flights that have been cancelled. Originally you just wanted to go from Ghana to Canada, and suddenly you find yourself in the EU without a visa, with nowhere to go for a week…
All this makes me very grateful to be an EU citizen!
IIRC even if you don’t have a visa for that country and you are there due to reasons beyond your control, immigration officers are permittted to give you a “pass”
(or whatever the name in the juridiction) until you can arrange to leave.
Happened to me in Heathrow once, I was on the way back from the US from a business visit. Plane was diverted to the UK because of a technical fault. I had an active UK visa. One of my colleagues did not. He was given a pass at immigration while the airline sorted the fault out (as it was they had to fly a new plane over). We were put up in the Holiday Inn near the airport and I who had studied in London spent the near two days showing him who had never been there all the sites worth seeing.
He later accepted a job offer there.
He has 20 bucks in his pocket? I had only 14 cents.
When I flew on British Airways years ago, we missed our connecting flight out of Heathrow, and the stewardesses took me to a hotel and brought me back in the morning. Payment wasn’t even mentioned. I was very young, but I also remember in Delhi when our flight was delayed, and everyone else went to a hotel (I called my uncle) and the airline paid for it.
You never get stuck in a place where you have somewhere to go. Never in all my life have I been stuck at an airport at home or at a destination. Atlanta, Newark, Cincinnati - you always get trapped at the hub.
I saw a movie once where two friendly stewardesses brought a stranded gentleman home with them. Ah, the cinema.
Well, here’s a link to a BBC page giving an overview of what rights passengers currently stuck at airports, etc. have.
If it wasn’t a mass event, and you were just 1 broke dude stuck in an airport for a week, I imagine you could survive on samples from the chinese restaurants. Mmmm, chicken on a toothpick.
Just to point out, that the snopes article is more current, but Cecil covered it many years back: http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/981/has-a-guy-been-stuck-in-the-paris-airport-since-1988-for-lack-of-the-right-papers
There is also the same column by Cecil with an update at the end.
He will be fine no one will let him starve in the airport…really now? That is just bad publicity. Besides you can go that long without food anyway. He is fine no intervention needed.
No, there will be thousands of skeletal, malnourished Europeans dying on the floor after a week of this!
So we now know the real reason Europeans are thinner than Americans. The Yearly Christmas travel fast.
My daughter just escaped from Heathrow (see my British Air bashing pit thread for details.
She got a tiny amount of food and water waiting on line Friday night/Saturday morning to reach a customer agent. She got a reimbursement form for up to 200 pounds a day to cover food, lodging, transportation, and perhaps essentials, because practically no one got a checked bag returned. BA did nothing about booking hotels or providing transport to them. We booked a room for her (she was one of the first stranded.) I doubt they helped anyone get a room. There were tons of people camping out in the lobby of her hotel, on a long waiting list for rooms.
A long time ago airlines did give you room and board. They may do it now, but I tend to book a room by myself to make sure I get one.
As for the situation in the OP, about all that could be done would be to appeal to Travelers’ Aid, or make a nuisance of yourself at the airline so they give you a voucher.
My daughter met a woman with 3 kids. She is an American citizen, and she was in transit from Ghana to the US. As an American citizen, she had no trouble getting out of the airport. Her husband, who is a citizen of Ghana, was not let out of the airport and was put in detention. So, where you come from seems to count a lot.
If our poor student could convince the authorities that he has no visa and is from the wrong place, he might get put in detention which would solve his problem.
They still do if you’re a business or first class passenger.
I have been stranded for a day once in Chicago and once in Rome, Italy. In both cases, the airline put us up at a very seedy hotel for the night and gave us food vouchers. The hotel in Rome was in a very bad neighborhood that was surprisingly far from the airport. I was there alone and (thankfully) thought to use the chain. Why? Because at two different points during the night, people attempted to open my locked door and the second time, were successful in doing so, and were only stopped by the chain, which they tried to force as well. My screaming scared them off. But seriously, what the Hell was this nightmare? I didn’t sleep the entire night because I was certain there would be a third attempt at a break in. I found myself wondering what responsibility Alitalia has to their passengers when they essentially forced this hotel upon their passengers who were subject to being attacked, mugged, kidnapped, etc. I would have complained if I thought I could have found someone who spoke English and cared, but couldn’t find either. I was just grateful to get out of there and have never returned to Italy again.
I don’t know if it is clear from some of the responses in this thread, but in the USA, with a weather-related cancelation, an airline has NO legal responsibility to give anyone much of anything in the way of food, hotel vouchers or similar assistance.
If it’s a cancellation due to equipment failure, on-board staffing issues (“Ladies and gentlemen, the pilot is just a little bit too fucked-up to fly right now.”) or something else that is the airlines responsibility, then they have to compensate the passengers for their time and trouble.
Over the years, I have been put up in hotels, (some very nice, some so-so) given cash or vouchers for taxis, food and booze for the night and been awarded (or bribed/bought off if you prefer) thousands of dollars in airfare credit, but never when the flight was cancelled due to a storm.
I have never had a flight cancelled when I was already in another country, but apparently the airlines have a different level of responsibility in other jurisdictions.
Soup kitchens etc. have materialised outside Hetahropw airport in the last few days. It’s not comfortable, but nobody is going to die of starvation. I actually got fried chicken from one!