The Managing Director of the Steam Packet has apologised to members of the public following a week of cancellations and rescheduled sailings.
Manxman suffered a technical issue in the early hours of Tuesday (August 19) morning which resulted in a number of cancellations.
These issues were then exasperated when the replacement vessel’s safety equipment was damaged during loading on Wednesday (August 20) morning.
Delays
The damage to Ben-my-Chree’s safety equipment occurred when a freight vehicle struck the deckhead pipework.
This led to the 8:45am departure from Douglas to Heysham eventually departing at 12:30pm, meaning its arrival in coincided with other vessels on scheduled services.
As Ben-my-Chree was operating outside of the IOMSPC’s usual slot times, priority was given to those vessels.
This prioritisation also extends to the availability of tug drivers to unload and load freight trailers – as they were engaged with freight operations for the other arrivals and departures in the port.
This circumstance was repeated overnight for the delayed 7:45pm and 2:15am departures.
Ben-my-Chree finally departed Heysham at 8:47am this morning and arrived time into Douglas at 12:45pm.
We Are Sorry
Managing Director Brian Thomson said: “We’re very aware this is a peak period for passenger and freight services. While we have largely managed to maintain continuity of services, the scheduled times have proven impossible to maintain – and for that we apologise sincerely.
“We have tried to mitigate this as much as possible, but fully accept that cancellations or changes to schedules have a major impact on travel plans.’
“We value our positive reputation for customer services. We have a robust feedback process, and we have a system in place for refunds or compensation in the event of delays, disruption or cancellations. Anyone affected should visit our website, or speak to a member of crew or our Reservations Team.”
Could Have Been Worse
Brian praised Steam Packet staff saying: “Finally, I’d like to acknowledge the hard work and team spirit of all of our people ashore and onboard who have dealt with the challenges of the past few days professionally and cheerfully.
“While we fully accept and acknowledge that the disruptions and delays to services have caused a lot of stress and confusion, as we target a return to normal service, I feel it is important for me to say this situation could have resulted in more cancellations had the team not responded so professionally, working a huge number of extra hours to ensure sailings kept going and traffic flowed in both directions.”
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