The Red Jet service was disrupted on Saturday morning.
At 8:29 Red Funnel issued a Tweet giving 15 minutes notice that the 8:45 from Southampton would be cancelled. In the same message they also said the 09:15 from Cowes would be hit. The reason given for both cancellations was “an engine issue+back-up craft in refit.”
Switch to hourly service
The next message, an hour later, informed users that they’d be switching to an hourly service – “Sailings will be at xx15 ex Soton & xx45 W.Cowes until further notice”, offering “Big apologies.”
Fifty minutes on they announced that they expected to resume their half hour service from 10:45/11:15 (ex Soton/ex W.Cowes), as their sea trials has been successful. Again apologising for disruption.
At about half past eleven the recommencment of the half hour service was confirmed.
Red Jet 3 out of service for annual refit
Ironically, in the Tweet before the Saturday morning cancellation notice Red Funnel had said that despite Red Jet 3 being out of service until 12th March – due to its annual refit – “every effort has been made to ensure service reliability during this period.”
Just goes to show the best of intentions can sometimes get scuppered.
Image: davidcjones under a CC BY 2.0 license
