Jet2 flight – journey from hell

I recently returned from my family holiday to Turkey with Jet2 Holidays.
Jet2 were very good as they have been every other time I travelled with them.
From arriving at the airport the service is always fantastic. They have plenty of staff to meet you at the airport and never have to queue to check-in/bag drop.
The staff are always very friendly including cabin crew and overseas reps.

The problem we had this year was due to the storms that hit the UK.
We were due to arrive into East Midlands airport at 2.30am. The pilot did warn on approach that there was bad weather and we may have a bumpy ride.
We started to sea lightning and the aircraft did drop a few times causing one lady to scream. I am a nervous flyer and so is my younger daughter so she was very frightened at this stage. After around 20 minutes of waiting to land we were told they would have to divert the aircraft to Gatwick.
This is around a 3hour drive my my home so it wasn;t the best news but we understand that safety is priority and was out of their control.
However things got worse as Jet2 don;t use Gatwick airport so there were no staff to assist us.
We were waiting on the aircraft for about 1/2 hour to find out if they could refuel and take us back to East Midlands but when they decided this wasn;t an option we were told to reclaim our luggage and they would take us by taxi/mini bus back to EMA airport.

We waited at baggage reclaim for around 2 hours with no information. People were getting irate and children were distraught. Eventually a representative from the airport came to tell us where to go for our taxi’s but had no idea how long our luggage would take.
When we finally got this we went straight to the coach area and around 20 taxis set off to take people home but then no more arrived.
We were stuck in a queue with hundreds of other people with no idea how we were going to get home.
I did call and speak to Jet2 who said we just had to wait or if we could get our own taxi they would reimburse us on our return.
All good but there were no taxis !!

Eventually the airport police took control and within 40 minutes 2 coaches arrived. They also provided us with bottles of water which is something Jet2 didn;t bother to provide.

It took 20 hours to get home from leaving our hotel to walking through the door.
I understand that these things happen and are out of their control, however it is how you handle the situation and this is where they fell short.
I am waiting on their comments .