Sorry about that mate. Getting travel plans cancelled ranks right up there with getting your wisdom teeth removed, with a pair of pliers, without anesthetic.

Hey Andy ... I had the same "pleasurable" experience with FlyBE coming back from Belfast to Glasgow back in April.

No reason for cancellation, no warning - they told us 5 mins before scheduled take off - and yes, that wonderful 7.50.

So I now refuse to fly FlyBE as well as BA :)

Hope you got home safe.

Must have been something in the air. My train journey back to Perth took an extra two hours, thanks to some numpty handcuffing himself to a signals pole...

I wonder what your foot print was AJ

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6716933.stm

I know how you feel me and my fiance over the past 12 months have been useing flybe. The past 5 trips we have eiher been delayed and flight cancelled. I normaly fly from Southampton to Glasgow!!!
The latest in the saga I went to drop off my fiance to the airport and my dad phoned to say I can't see her flight on the departure list. So when we got there we discovered at the flybe desk the flight went over a
hour ago and that my young lady had a email to notify of change of flight way back in February. Only thing is she keeps every email to do with flights so they told a great big lie!!!!! Not a happy bunny.
Glad that she moving down in 2 weeks so no more flights up there.......

Bit harsh but very true!!!!! See I wouldn't be so annoyed if they just told the truth instead of lies.....

STOP MOANING AND TREAT IT AS A LEARNING CURVE ABOUT WHAT CAN GO WRONG IN A WORLD OF CHAOS! TREAT IT AS AN ADVENTURE AND BE GLAD YOU WERE NOT INVOLVED IN AN AVIATION ACCIDENT. WHAT IS THE POINT OF MOANING,MOANING, MOANING? GET A LIFE, THIS HAPPENS ALL DAY EVERYDAY, JUST GET ON WITH IT PAL.

Every airline has cancelations and delays. If a plane breaks down ,they dont have a spare aircraft, like the rest of us (dont have a spare car in case of breakdown) Then there are the MOANERS who rant at Mr. Flybe because of weather cancelations, well rather be on the ground then flying in adverse weather where the chance of DEATH is so much greater. Go and pick on other airlines and leave Me alone, ONE delay and YOU are Moaning, Moaning, Moaning, try flying in the USA and then tell the WWW about cancelations! I have taken the time to answer your Rant, as I am sick of one sided critics who should be in a Looney bin as their entire lives revolve around Moaning, Moaning, Moaning, more then likely keeping you awake at night? eating away at your soul, what on earth do you do when something serious, happens to you? Ps learn ENGLISH (gonna) what sort of language is that then? I suggest that if you can find a company who does not cancell flights then stick with them, but take the precaution of wearing a space suit, because they are not on this planet.

If you cut me in half, you would find "Flybe" through me like a stick of rock! How very dare you slander my wonderfull airline? You are now on my black list and will have to undergo many, many, more security checks then anyone else will ever have to, in the history of security checks! My perogative no less! "No delat" ??? I once again have to question your grammer????? "Bmi" Ha! have closed more routes then Freddie Laker, watch this space for the longevity of this regional airline! Inside knowledge is a wonderfull thing matey! As for aircraft, If you look at the UK airline fleet list you will find that we have the most up to date aircraft in the whole UK sector with the average age being TWO years! with even more brand new aircraft arriving shortly! We have the most Modern fleet in the whole of the WORLD, FACT! so a comparrison with scoda is in fact a load of bull! is it not? Skoda may be your choice of transport ducky but mine is a new FLYBE aircraft, good luck with Bmi make sure you dont have to eat your words and have to fly with me? watch the business pages???????????????????/

@mike cheers for my comments. It's good to know a little background. Its also nice to see that you read my original post and saw that my real complaint was not about the cancellation but in fact the service. Something Mr Flybe missed and then went on to only strengthen my original sentiments.

My only hope is that someone at FlyBe (except Mr Flybe) has read this, and taken note.

@Jammy dodger I'm not ranting at the flight being cancelled, though it was annoying, I'm more annoyed at the staff who made the whole experience even more unpleasant for me. Like some other commenters I'm presuming you skimmed my post rather than fully reading it as I mention the reason that was given to me - "not enough staff"!

This isn't a case of faulty plan or something like that! Though if they had explained that one of the wings would of fallen off mid flight I probably would of been happy to have it cancelled. But for the staff to stand there with their 'I don't care' attitude that's what annoyed me. My money goes towards the flight and SERVICE. I don't pay for crap service and I don't expect it!

@Jammy Dodger, It was the FlyBe Staff at the Edinburgh airport that I dealt with and no one else. I probably should of got their names and spoke to someone higher up the chain of command the next day, but I know now. I'll see how they handle my next problem (sorry, that sounds a little pessimistic) and I'll go from there.

Well....its interesting reading all your comments. I work for a handling agent who yes....thats right handle flybe (get this straight not are flybe, just handle them) and I have witnessed all these delays and cancellations.
And, been on the end of everyones abuse that gets hurled towards us. Yes theres no doubt flybe do or did cancel more flights than other airlines, and 60% of the time it was staffing issues - not enough pilots. But the
thing is the airline gets normal delays too, like a technical fault, a tyre blow out, a bird strike, which leads to a delay and then....9 times out of 10 the crew going out of hours - which leads to your last minute
cancellation. I can understand peoples frustration, but what really annoys me is the way passengers hurl abuse at us - the people who want to help them when its not us causing the delay. We had to have the police
at the gates a number of occasions due to this appauling behaviour. If a delay happens it happens, if theres no news from the agents then its because we dont have it, and flybe dont give it out that easily. So theres
no point us lying and making excuses on behalf of them. And if you say it seems we dont care, its not that we dont care, its that we have had to deal with 12 hour shifts of the same cr*p from passengers, thinking
we alone are the issue for the delay, so when we say its delayed 2/3/4 hours, thats simply what we're saying. We cant say we're reallly really really sorry and it will never happen again - listen to the calls, we'll always
say on behalf of flybe - cause at the end of the day, we're not them! Anyway, we wont handal them soon, even our company has had enough and got rid of them. But its a shame, because they are improving, and
the staff are always so friendly and nice!

Upon reading these comments, here some experience from Holland. My wife flew from AMS - schiphol to Southampton, or was supposed to ! Close before boarding she heard there was a 30 minute delay. When the 30 min ran out, another sign appeared : FLIGHT CANCELLED ! So there you are, on a big airport like Schiphol, with a last minute notice of NON departing. The next flight would go in about two hours, so they waited. The exact same thing happened with that flight ! They were told that they had to wait for the ten PM flight, everybody from the two previous flights would go on that plane. As it became ten PM, there were no service attendees, the gates were closed etc etc.

At 1.30 AM I received a sms from her that she was now in Birmingham (!!) looking for a hotel (in the middle of the night). Just a few minutes ago she was on the phone, she got to Southampton in the middle of the night by coach, a two and a half hour drive, and was in her hotel at 5.00 AM. Only to be woken up by a fire alert at 9.00 AM, rushing everybody outside. She is now at Southampton airport again, waiting for her flight back, if it will fly of course !

It’s just unbelievable that they let people from the continent who want to go to Southampton put up with this. The problem for us in Holland is, we have no choice if we want a direct flight to Southampton, for they are the only ones flying from Amsterdam to Southampton. Or we are obliged to fly to London or any other major airport and switch planes there….

Great Flying FLybe, NOT….

Well! we will miss ya'aaaallllllllll I have checked this out and I think you will find that you missheard the tannoy, what you thought was a call for Exeter was indeed followed by a call for Manc and you were in the toilet with your mate? the boards are the responsibility of the AIRPORT not the company!

I am writing in connection to Flight Number BE7230 from Manchester to Edinburgh on the 5th November 2007 at 18:35pm.

My wife and I arrived at Manchester Airport at approximately 1.00pm for this flight to Edinburgh, upon arriving we checked in, before we checked in we asked if it was possible to get on an earlier flight and were informed that it was if we paid a fee of £151.00 per person, so we kindly declined and said we would wait for our booked flight. We were asked if we would be leaving the airport and said we wouldn't... and checked in in the normal manner.

To pass some time we walked around the airport visiting the shopping areas and cafe's etc, I was also talking to a good friend who works at Manchester Airport and looked after us during our stay. We continually checked the screens to confirm the flight times didn't change as did my friend. After a while we went through security as to avoid queues nearer our boarding time, we went through security at approximately 4:30pm. Again we visited the shopping areas and the cafe's, we also continued to check the screens for any changes to our flight. At about 5:30pm the screens showed that our flight (BE7230) was now delayed and was leaving at 8:40pm.

I contacted my friend who informed me the delay was due to "technical difficulties" I asked if there was a chance of the flight returning to the earlier time, I stood in front of him as he, and his colleague, checked the computer to see if it was an estimated time or a calculated time and it turned out it was calculated... and as such the time wouldn't get earlier.

We continued to monitor the screens for any changes and at approximately 20:05pm the screen said to report to Gate 16. So we went straight away, after a short walk we arrived at Gate 16 with 2 other passengers also hoping to catch the same flight (BE7230 to Edinburgh) we sat down in the seated area and waited for someone to arrive. After a short time a lady informed us that our flight had been canceled at 6:00pm. We and the other 2 passengers made our way back to the departure lounge, we contacted Flybe representatives who informed us that announcements were made and that our names were called to report to the earlier flight. We and the other two passengers denied that this happened.

I again contacted my friend who was very surprised as he also never heard any call, the information he had was that the flight was still flying and should have left Manchester at 9:10pm. BMI staff also confirmed that there was infact NO CALL put out. Feeling VERY aggrieved at this point and very let down by Flybe we continued to debate that a call was made for us.. We were taken to a different part of the Airport by a male member of Flybe staff to meet his Supervisor to get an explanation.

as the Superviser (A Blonde haired lady) was stating her side I informed her that we had 3 kids at home and really needed to get back home, at this point I noticed that the male member of staff (a scottish man) who escorted us to her was standing with a SMIRK on his face... he seemed.. no, he most definitely was.. taking great pleasure in our situation and found it very funny. As you can imagine this extremely angered me and I asked him "what the f*** are you laughing at?".. that was a mistake on my part, as after that the Supervisor refused point blank to speak to us and they locked themselves in a room. A few minutes later another member of the Flybe staff came up a flight of stairs.. I approached her to ask for her help in sorting out this situation, at that point there was a loud knock from the window where the other members of staff were, I looked at the window where I saw the Scottish man and the Supervisor , the Scottish man drew his finger across his throat (what he meant by this I'm not sure, but where I come from it is a threat of a cut throat) then put his finger to his lips in a "shhhhhhhh" manner, the member of staff who came up the stairs quickly said she couldn't help and hurried herself into the same room locking the door behind herself.We could hear laughter coming from the room at this point.

This behaviour is VERY unprofessional and done absolutely nothing to ease or resolve the now serious situation.

Mr Flybe has stated....

"Well! we will miss ya'aaaallllllllll"

...Yes.. about as much as we will miss Flybe WHEN their own bad practices finally put them out of business and Mr. Flybe out of a job!!

Sorry, mistake in that last message! A refund IS offered if your flight is cancelled!! There isnt if your flights delayed.

Good day. I, like Mr Flybe, am staff at BE, and it pains me to hear peoples 'less than great' experiences with the company. Ive worked with them for over 5 years, and i really cannot stress how much the company has improved over this time. I can assure people it is getting better. They do try their best to avoid cancelling flights. its not in an airlines interest to scrap a flight, anyone knows that an aircraft makes money in the air, not sat on a remote stand at an airport. The q400, for example, will break into profit with just over 20 seats filled. From experience, most cancellations occur from staffing issues, and, if you look, flybe are eagerly recruiting at its key bases, to avoid problems like this in the future. Some cancellations are due to technical problems with the aircraft...i, myself (as an engineer), recently had to pull an aircraft from service minutes before the passengers were loaded after a runaway baggage cart wedged itself under the wing . I understand that your flight has been cancelled, and you want you want to get home, but i have to consider the possibility of 49 people not getting home...ever

im not sure if this contributes, but i thought id chuck in me few pennies worth

just my 2 pennies worth.

alot of the comments on here are about the level of customer service provided by staff when traveling with flybe.
I would just like to point out that out of all the places flybe fly to around UK and europe, the only place where ground staff
are employed by the airline is in Guernsey. Everywhere else, they are employed by what we call 'handling agents'. These are
3rd party companies that flybe pay on a 'per flight' basis. It is a shame that quite often handling agent staff let the airline
down by providing inadequate service. The only exception is ticket desk staff, who are often employed by the airline but again
, not all the time. Ticket desks are often found near the check-in desks and ticket desk staff will rarely get directly involved
with passengers during a flight delay.

so to sum up, poor customer service is not acceptable. However, not directly attributable to the airline where a handling agent
is used.

As an employee of the airline in question, it is sad to see these posts. 99% of staff provide a wonderful service to passengers and
a large percentage (about 80%) arrive within 15 mins of the schedule. So it would seem that alot of you have been particularly unlucky.
Also, from a personal perspective 90% of days that I work are delay free.

Please give us another chance, you may find that things have improved significantly.

Why don't you get a life. Being delayed is not the end of the world. Used to work for FlyBE and although I took voluntary redundancy years ago, I still regard them as a good airline. It just wasn't your lucky day and if you used the tone you are using on this site, well you deserve the answer you got.

Take a chill pill and next time go by train!

Howdee doodee, well we'm off to a most 'ansome start to the summer, everybody is happy and off on their hols without any stress or delays, how lovely to hear no more moaning, moaning, moaning from silly people, happy holls peeps.

...May I also add that Flybe add a "surchage" for paying by debit card as well as by credit card?

This means that they are charging all passengers extra just to pay for their tickets.

It's the same as going to Sainsburys for your weekly shop which costs £80, and then being told at checkout that it will cost you £5 extra for paying for it. NOT FAIR!!!

I've been to Trading Standards about this, and apparently they are not breaking any laws, but I don't think it's fair because we have no choice but to pay by card.