Everyone has a story about travel nightmares. Canceled flights, missed connections, lost bags, and a whole host of other air travel problems. But passengers on ultra-low cost carrier Wow Air had one for the books when the airline went belly up overnight, stranding travelers, some of whom got the news while waiting to board flights at the airport.
This caught passengers off guard as Wow Air gave little warning of imminent collapse. Indeed, on Thursday, it announced that flights had been postponed and that the airline was in the final stages of raising much needed funds, indicating the flights would resume once documentation had been finalized.
But that promised deal never materialized. Just hours later, the notice released by the airline was stark: “WOW AIR has ceased operation. All WOW AIR flights have been cancelled [sic].”
Under teasingly helpful headings “How will I reach my destination?” and “What are my rights?” the notice offers a couple of vague sentences that might be better replaced with “good luck” for all the answers they have for passengers wondering how they’re going to get to their destination.
And as passengers made clear on Twitter, they have plenty of questions:
@wow_air cancels flight to Dublin from Detroit at the last minute, looks like the company has gone bust. Any chance you can accommodate a family of four on @AerLingus out of Chicago or Tornado tomorrow the 28th. You would make this little girl Maeve very happy to see her cousins pic.twitter.com/jMnmWSh6zI
— Barrai Omuireagain (@BOmuireagain) March 28, 2019
Tempers were high last night at #yyz #wowair. I can’t post anymore of this due to the swearing!
The flight staff had just informed us they were in the same position as us. pic.twitter.com/tJjcNbVBku— travelgirlto (@travelgirlto) March 28, 2019
Wow Air clearly doesn’t have answers, or any money, leaving passengers to find their own way home. Dirt-cheap flights, it turns out, might not be as good a deal as they seem.
