Actually, the passengers of the Smartlynx charter flight 6Y 8461 wanted to fly from Saarbrücken to Las Palmas on Sunday at 6 a.m. However, there was a delay of almost 00 hours due to technical problems. And then 14 passengers and their luggage should stay behind, because the carrier had miscalculated the weight.
In the end there was no one who wanted to give up the holiday flight after such a long wait, so the captain made the decision that a total of 50 pieces of luggage would not be taken along. In concrete terms, this means that up to 50 travelers – assuming one suitcase per passenger – arrived on Gran Canaria without clothes and the like.
Saarbrücken Airport told the RTL TV station: “The airline SmartLynx, which operates the flights from Saarbrücken on behalf of Tui Germany, had massive operational problems. As far as Saarbrücken Airport is concerned, we tried to make this situation, which was very unpleasant for the passengers, as bearable as possible by keeping them constantly informed of the state of affairs, as far as we knew. We also tried to accelerate the start anyway, but we didn't succeed. Ultimately, the captain has the responsibility and right to make decisions about the aircraft.
The severely delayed charter flight was operated with the Airbus A320, which bears the registration ES-SAW. The departure from Saarbrücken was 13 hours and 39 minutes later than originally planned. This plane landed in Las Palmas at 00:10. Due to the delay of this connection, subsequent flights were also delayed.