Kazakhs stuck in Antalya intend to sue Turkish airline
According to the Kazakh Foreign Ministry, the Consul of Kazakhstan has intervened in the situation of extreme urgency occurred last night with Kazakhstani tourists in Turkey and helped them.
"Once again our citizens suffer from the misconduct by the representatives of one of the Turkish airlines. On July 26, at noon about 100 passengers from a range of countries, including 30 Kazakh tourists, were to fly from Antalya to Istanbul. The Kazakhstanis planned to fly to Almaty after that.
However, for unknown reasons, the flight of Onur Air airline was postponed first for two hours, and was henceforth postponed every two hours. Closer to midnight it was completely canceled. The staff just returned the luggage and announced the cancellation of the flight to Istanbul without any explanation of the reasons to all the might-have-been passengers," Head of the Kazakh MFA press service Anuar Zhainakov said on Facebook.
According to him, about 20 Kazakhstani citizens did not get any explanations from the Turkish airline representatives and went to Istanbul on their own, while 10 tourists, including kids, without enough money for food or sleeping accommodation, appealed for help to the Consul of Kazakhstan in Antalya.
"At about midnight, a Kazakh diplomat met with our citizens and, with the assistance of one of the Turkish travel companies, managed to urgently arrange meals and check them in a hotel. So far, nothing have com of the attempts to contact the airline's management, to receive any explanation of the reasons for the cancellation of the flight and to demand the provision of departure of our citizens to Istanbul. The representatives of the airline also do not give any reference confirming their guilt in canceling the flight," he added.
To help the Kazakh citizens, the Kazakh Consul is now working on organizing their departure to their homeland.
As explained by the Consul, on return, many of them intend to bring a Turkish airline to court.
"I believe that the Kazakh diplomats fulfilled their task of providing urgent assistance to the compatriots in need. Nevertheless, the issue of tourists' responsibility for themselves and for their rest remains open. Therefore, we again would like to strongly recommend all the citizens leaving the country to carefully think over their trip, take into account possible risks and take care of maintaining a reserve amount of money so that to avoid such situations," Anuar Zhainakov summed up.