Daily News; Saturday,January 31, 2009 @21:15
About 200 passengers of KLM Royal Dutch Airline scheduled to travel to various destinations overseas have been stranded for almost three days and are uncertain of their travel, the 'Sunday News' has established.
Reliable sources told the 'Sunday News' in Dar es Salaam yesterday that the travel, previously scheduled for last Thursday, was postponed for several times a situation that plunged most of the passengers into anxiety.
The flight, KLM number 571 was expected to leave on January 29, 2009 at 11.00pm and we were told to wait for 45 minutes as the flight was experiencing some technical problems, one of the passengers who preferred anonymity told this paper.
The passenger told the 'Sunday News' in a telephone conversation that upon expiry of the 45 minutes on that particular day, the passengers were suddenly told the trip had been cancelled. They were taken to various hotels to rest while waiting for further information. The hotels included Blue Pearl and Landmark Hotel at Ubungo area and Golden Tulip Hotel at Masaki.
Another anonymous source complained that the KLM management had not been directly communicating with them, on contrary it was passing on information to them through hotels staff. I was travelling to US and we have received (yesterday) information that there is another flight from Amsterdam which we are going to use and we would depart today (yesterday) at 22.30 pm.
But we are not sure if this time the promise will materialize, the traveller lamented. This paper visited the Golden Tulip Hotel and one of the staff, who preferred not to be named, confirmed that several KLM passengers were accommodated at the hotel since last Friday. However he could not allow the reporter to talk to any passenger, saying, Some of them have gone to town for private business and others are just in their rooms resting. You better communicate with KLM directly, he said.
The KLM Country Manager, Mr Raymond Reedijk said all the 200 passengers were expected to leave yesterday at 22.30, We have already informed and assured all the affected passengers that they will leave tonight and I think everything will be OK, he said. KLM is the Netherlands national airline, and it operates domestic and worldwide scheduled passenger and cargo services to more than 90 destinations around the world.
SOURCE;Daily News; Saturday,January 31, 2009 @21:15