In an event that reminds us of two years ago, Singapore budget carrier Scoot once again appears to be majorly mishandling an epic flight delay.

Passengers on Scoot flight TR1 from Sydney to Singapore, initially scheduled to depart on Saturday (Sept. 30) afternoon, underwent a harrowing experience that has so far stretched on more than 24 hours.

Flight TR1 was scheduled to leave Sydney on Sept. 30, 12:30pm (Sydney time) and arrive in Singapore at 7:05pm (Singapore time). However, in what seems to be a most harrowing encounter, passengers experienced multiple delays, misplaced accommodation, and to top it all off, little or no communication from Scoot.

According to multiple posts by affected passengers on Facebook (scroll down to see the public posts), we pieced together a timeline of what happened:

Saturday, Sep. 30, 2017

• 12.30pm: Flight TR1 scheduled to leave Sydney.
• 1.30pm: Passengers were informed that flight was delayed due to maintenance.
• 4.30pm: After waiting on a plane for 4 hours, passengers were told that the flight was cancelled; told to check in at airport for accommodation.
• Depending on different accounts, passengers waited in line for between 2 and 5 hours to get to the airport counter.
• 10.00pm: Some passengers were ferried to Novotel for the night. Some passengers allegedly stayed overnight at the airport.

Sunday, Oct. 1, 2017

• 5.00am: Passengers who managed to get accommodation were picked up at Novotel to board Scoot flight scheduled to depart at 8am.
• 8.00am: Passengers were told that the flight was delayed (again) for 1.5 hours.
• 11.00am: Plane taxied out but returned again due to "technical problems".
• 1.30pm: Plane finally left Sydney airport.

Lack of communication

Multiple delays aside, perhaps what was more shocking was the communication problems (or lack of it).

Passengers complained about the lack of pre-emptive communication from the flight carrier to assure them about the situation, leaving them anxious and stranded in limbo.

According to some passengers, there was also no proper communication between Scoot and the hotel accommodation Novotel. One particular passenger recounted how passengers had to wait for Scoot to confirm more accommodation after spending more than three hours in line.

"Eventually customers are told they are waiting for accommodation. 3 hours later the line of at least 100 stops abruptly because they ARE WAITING ON CONFIRMATION OF MORE ACCOMMODATION. How in the world the number of people in line was not communicated to whoever was booking the hotels is beyond everyone in the line, but, we're still here. There are 6 counters but only 3 of them are manned and periodically taking people. Usually it's just one counter that's active. I don't blame the reps or the workers here but want everyone who is considering flying with Scoot to take a good look at this story because it could be you. Terrible communication, lack of resource allocation and just one of the most poorly executed contingency plans ever resulted in one of the worst days 300+ people have ever had."

Another account on Facebook described how a group of 40 passengers had no accommodation arranged and were stranded in the airport with no food and drinks simply because they were at the back of the queue and the airport had closed.

"For a group of close to 40 passengers, which included a mother and a kid, no accommodation arrangement was done for them. They were stranded in the airport through the night with no food and drinks as the airport had closed --- Reason this 40 passengers had no accommodation arrangement was because they were at the back of the queue. After queuing for accommodation arrangement and waiting in the cold for 2 hours for the shuttle to the hotel, no shuttle came and no accommodation was made."

In another account from someone else in the same group, it was pointed out that there was a mother and child, as well as an elderly couple, who waited outside in the cold for a shuttle that never arrived, until 11:30pm. Stranded and starving for over 12 hours, the group ended up camping overnight in the airport.

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Accommodation issues

For those who were lucky enough to be allocated accommodation at Novotel, some also ran into more problems.

One passenger, Jeremy Teo, recounted that after being sent to Novotel, they were told that there was no room for them.

He was then subsequently sent to a motel, which also had no room for him and his family (which included a six-month-old baby, by the way). He then went back to Novotel where the group of affected passengers were eventually given a function room to rest at 1.00am.

https://www.facebook.com/flyscoot/posts/1547162645343258

Teo was sufficiently fed up to give up on Scoot and take it to its parent, Singapore Airlines:

Interestingly, he was receiving pretty prompt replies from SQ, where he posted further information and updates:

Passengers complained that even throughout the whole ordeal, they were not contacted, at all, by Scoot. Calls to the 24-hour helpline and appeals to the Scoot Facebook page either went unanswered or were, they said, attended to with unsatisfactory answers.

The affected passengers finally left Sydney at 1:30pm (10:30am Singapore time) and are currently en-route to Singapore, scheduled to arrive at Changi Airport this evening.

Scoot CEO says "Bad old days" of budget airlines are gone

Meanwhile, a perfectly-timed story in Channel NewsAsia published on Sunday afternoon quotes Scoot CEO Lee Lik Hsin saying:

“The industry model has changed. It’s no longer the bad old budget airlines of the past, leaving you stranded. We all take care of our customers. We have to. We know that."

Don't believe us? There's even a video that you can watch to hear him saying it:

Hilarious.

In response to Mothership's queries about the flight delay, Scoot said the following in a statement:

"Due to an aircraft technical issue, Scoot flight TR1 scheduled to depart Sydney for Singapore on 30 Sep 2017 afternoon was retimed while engineers rectified the issue. The flight carrying 234 passengers departed Sydney on 1 Oct 2017 at 1.33pm. Hotel accommodation and transportation were arranged for affected passengers during the delay."

Going by the accounts provided above, we're not sure everyone agrees.

Here's the previous flight delay we really wish they learned from:

Furious passengers deplaned twice from delayed Scoot flight from Singapore to Perth after crew “exceeded work hours”

Scoot finally speaks up about delayed Perth flight, passengers promptly slam it for vagueness

Top image via Fu Wei Fong's Facebook post.