Is my niece’s Greek odyssey standard airline practice?

Q My niece has endured an extremely stressful journey home from Greece. She was booked to fly from Athens to London Gatwick. Despite allowing plenty of time to reach the airport, the ferry had an engine problem and arrived over two hours late, which meant she missed the deadline for the flight.

She was able to book online for another flight to Heathrow at 1.30pm and received an email confirmation. But when she checked in immediately afterwards, she did not receive a seat number. At the gate she was told that the flight was overbooked and that she would have to wait to see if five people failed to appear. Is it normal procedure to put her last in line because she was a late booking? In the end, she was allowed on the flight. But what would have happened otherwise?

Sean K

A This unfortunate episode is a good example of why airlines overbook – but not a good example of how they should behave when overbooking presents a problem.

You might find it absurd that an airline can be prepared to sell more than 200 tickets for a plane with only 196 seats. Yet when overbooking is carried out properly, everyone benefits. Typically a proportion of passengers won’t reach the airport on time, whether due to ferry propulsion problems or anything else. Others are simply “no-shows”.

For an average flight, easyJet (not the airline involved here) puts the no-show figure at 5 per cent – or 10 people on a 200-seat jet. At peak holiday times such as now, the figure tends to be lower. But from the airline’s point of view, selling a few extra tickets represents pure profit – assuming they correctly predict the number of no-shows.

The airline’s historical data will have shown it was worthwhile selling an extra seat just an hour or two before departure. But there should be no correlation between booking at the last minute and being a candidate for denial of boarding. Rather than saying “wait and see” to your niece, the airline should seek prospective volunteers – saying, for example: “Who will accept €200 to wait for our later plane?”

As it turned out, the airline made a handsome profit on its decision to sell that final ticket. Had your niece been denied boarding, she will have been owed €400 (£345) in statutory compensation, as well as a seat on another flight to London on the same day.

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Q I have just received an email from Wizz Air promoting flights to “a new destination: Sphinx”. The email refers to the “monumental guardian of the majestic pyramids of Giza”. Is this a Cairo airport I’ve never heard about? If so, how handy is it for the tourist sites?

Tom J

A Being on the Wizz Air mailing list, I also received this interesting message. From 30 October, the budget airline (third in Europe behind Ryanair and easyJet) will fly from Luton to this relatively new airport, which shares facilities with a big air force base. I look forward eagerly to trying the new Wizz Air route. It will bring welcome low fares compared with British Airways and Egyptair, and will also allow me to avoid the main Cairo international airport – which I find a chaotic and unfriendly introduction to a wonderful city and nation.

A quick reminder of the geography of Egypt’s teeming capital. Cairo straddles the Nile, with most places of interest on the eastern bank. The main international airport is about 20km (12 miles) northeast of the city centre. The great sphinx of Giza and the main pyramid complex are about 10km (6 miles) east. Crucially, this is also the location of the absurdly delayed Grand Egyptian Museum, which was due to open a decade ago. When it finally opens – possibly late this year, maybe in 2024 – this spectacular creation will immediately become one of the world’s great heritage destinations.

Where does Sphinx airport fit into this picture? While you might imagine it would be right beside the great antiquities, in fact it is about 32km (20 miles) northwest – even further away than the main airport. But crucially, it has a fast highway link with Giza that completely avoids the centre of one of Africa’s biggest cities.

Furthermore, with a single, modern terminal, the arrival (and departure) experience is likely to be relaxed. And if your destination is the fine city of Alexandria at the mouth of the Nile, Sphinx airport is much better placed on the main highway northwest to the Mediterranean.

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Q We are due to fly to Italy in four days’ time. My partner has lost his passport – he thinks on the journey back from Gatwick airport to London after his last trip. So he needs a replacement but I can’t see how he can get a new one in time. Is there any way that you can see how – for example, waiting at the Passport Office in London or getting an emergency travel document?

Name supplied

A Sorry to hear this. In earlier times it would have been a relatively simple matter of turning up at the Passport Office at Petty France in London first thing in the morning and waiting for an interview and, an hour or two later, a replacement passport. But those days have long gone and the procedure for replacing a lost passport is now much slower. The emergency travel document to which you refer is only for British citizens who are abroad and have lost their passport.

To try to salvage your trip, your only choice is the “one week Fast Track” service. This is an analogue, rather than digital experience. Collect a paper application form from a post office, fill it out and turn up at a passport office for a pre-booked appointment with two photos. Booking an appointment online is the trickiest part, unless you have the good fortune to live in Northern Ireland: the Belfast office always seems to have times open. (For the avoidance of doubt, you do not need a passport to travel between Great Britain and Northern Ireland.) From my observations, Durham, Glasgow and Liverpool are the next most frequent options for short-notice appointments.

Try not to be disheartened by the “one week” tag. If you attend an appointment on Wednesday and are booked to travel on Saturday that may look impossible. But HM Passport Office promises it will be delivered to your home within seven days; the organisation is famously cautious with its estimated timings. Anecdotally you might be lucky and get the document on Friday; just make sure someone is at home to receive it.

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