The Latvian airline Smartlynx caused chaos at Basel Airport at the weekend, because the flight operations were literally the worm in it. There were considerable delays, which even meant that due to the night flight ban, it was no longer possible to land at the EuroAirport.

For example, a plane was delayed by more than eleven hours and affected passengers felt downright let down by the charter airline. The care services would have consisted of a small sandwich and a small bottle of mineral water. There was nothing more and the staff is said to have shown themselves to be rather shy. Basel Airport merely stated that the connection in question had been delayed due to the delayed arrival of the plane. The Basel-Rhodes connection, which was served with the YL-LCQ, was affected on Saturday.

But that's not enough: between Friday and Sunday, flights to Lyon from the Canary Islands had to avoid flights, because you could no longer land in Basel due to nighttime restrictions. The passengers were accommodated in a hotel and later carted to Basel.

Smartlynx attempted to cope with the effects of the apparent operational problems with the help of wet lease aircraft. Lumiwings with the SX-LWC and Privilege Style with the EC-NLJ were used. This minimized the impact, but on Sunday the passengers on the Basel-Heraklion route were still eight hours late. The return flight was only on time because the use of the Privilege Style machine made it possible to change the machine circulation. This is how this delay was "absorbed".

Tuifly Germany stepped in with the D-ATUR on both Sunday and Monday and served Kos and Rhodes. As a result, there was also a delay of several hours on the Saarbrücken circuit served by Smartlynx.

The flights from Basel and Saarbrücken are not operated by Smartlynx on its own account, but on behalf of the tour operator Tui. A few weeks ago, the Cockpit Association strongly criticized the fact that the fleet of the in-house Tuifly was dismantled and shortly afterwards the Latvian Smartlynx was "chartered in". Smartlynx didn't want to comment on the delays and cancellations of the past few days.