Airline suffers two major delays

Flyjet says the delays are to no-one's benefit

An airline has apologised to more than 220 passengers stranded at Newcastle Airport after their flight to Tenerife was delayed for more than 12 hours.

The Flyjet plane was due to leave at 0700 BST on Friday, but was grounded due to a fuel line fault. After repairs it is now due to take off at 2000 BST.

It also emerged that Friday's 1900 BST Flyjet departure to Crete will now not leave until Saturday morning.

The company has been dogged by other major delays in the past few months.

It will no longer be operating from Newcastle from October.

Passengers for the Crete flight were offered hotel rooms overnight.

Highly complex

In a statement relating to the first delay the company said: "Flyjet apologise for the delay to flights FJE 610/611 which is due to a fault in the fuel system.

"The faults in this aircraft are not unusual either in type or quantity. All aircraft are highly complex machines and faults occur.

"Flyjet is a small airline and we do not have the aircraft to move around between bases so it is easy to count the faults and point fingers.

"We are very sorry for the delays, which are to no-one's benefit and cost us large amounts of money, and hope to have solutions before too much longer."