90 Stranded Passengers Spend Night At Whitsunday Airport

Almost one hundred passengers were left stranded at Whitsunday Coast Airport on Tuesday evening after their Jetstar flight was cancelled due to an engineering issue.

With limited local accommodation options due to already high occupancy rates over the school holidays, the passengers were left with nowhere to stay.

Fortunately, our local community-owned and Council-operated airport were able to provide them with a “safe and dry” place to stay for the night.

Whitsunday Coast Airport Manager, Craig Turner, said that he and his team were on-hand until 1am Tuesday night and returned at 6am to assist passengers.

“It was an unfortunate situation, but our priority was to ensure that people were looked after in a safe and controlled environment,” he said.

“Our only focus was to lessen the impact on visitors, we just went into fix-it mode, offering free water and help with anything they needed.”

The Airport Café, Taste Whitsundays, was open until 11pm that evening and re-opened at 6am to serve coffee and breakfast rolls.

Airport security was also extended overnight.

“The whole team – from the café to the cleaners and security staff – I am so proud of all of them,” said Mr Turner.

“There are two ways to look at a situation and collectively we banded together to make the best of it.”

A Jetstar statement said they had been unable to fly in an engineer to fix the problem on the plane that evening due to bad weather.

When they realised passengers were stranded, Jetstar said they put on a special flight that night to try to fly passengers who couldn’t find accommodation to Brisbane.

Unfortunately, this flight was unable to land in Proserpine due to fog.

By midday on Wednesday the majority of passengers had checked into flights and Mr Turner said he anticipated everyone would be able to transit from the airport over the course of the day.

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