The latest air carrier to arrive on the Island is not so much Zoom as ‘Gloom’ for some passengers.

Complaints of delays, ticket cancellation penalties and incorrect website information are among the gripes to The Royal Gazette.

The low-cost carrier is currently waiting clearance to fly the most direct route between Bermuda and London, across the Atlantic. Until air regulators in the UK give the go-ahead, its pilots must take a longer flight path up the US east coast, across Greenland, past Iceland and then down through Scotland.

As a result the twice-weekly flights from Bermuda and London Gatwick have taken nine hours — two hours longer than British Airways. However, some passengers have endured additional delays of several hours.

George Sutherland said his partner Fiona Robertson’s sister and two children endured a lengthy delay at L.F. Wade International Airport on July 10. The flight to Gatwick then took ten and half hours.

He said: “They arrived at the airport at 5.30 p.m. to check in and were told the flight was delayed by an hour. We were then told the flight had taken off and would be landing at 7.30 p.m. I left but on returning home, received a call from my partner’s sister who was distraught. She said that the flight had not in fact left JFK as stated.

“It didn’t get in until 9.30 p.m. and then departed at 10 p.m.”

Mr. Sutherland said Morven Garroway, 46, and Max, 14, and Lucy, 9, did not arrive at Gatwick until 12.30 p.m. the following day, due to a diversion. “The pilot had to land in Manchester because his air time had run out,” said Mr. Sutherland.

He said although Zoom gave the passengers free return tickets as compensation, the family were “very tired”.

“It doesn’t mitigate my original point that people are buying tickets under false advertising on the website,” he said. “It says the flight time is six hours when it is really nine hours. I welcomed the competition to British Airways but I’m very disappointed. I would have expected something better than this.”

Mr. Sutherland, Deputy Headteacher of Warwick Academy Primary School, added that due to the delay, the family also missed their connecting flights to Edinburgh. They had already rebooked the domestic flights after hearing that the Gatwick arrival time would be 9 a.m., not 6 a.m. as advertised on the website, and so wasted $350.

“They rebooked with BA and so lost all the money,” he said. “The website still says it lands at 6 a.m. but this is a smokescreen, because the flight doesn’t actually land until three hours later. The advertising is all wrong.”

Another person to complain described the operation as “shambolic”. In a letter to The Royal Gazette, ‘IDT’ of Pembroke referred to the diversion to Manchester on July 10, saying: “One month on it appears that Zoom is unable to run a single flight without lengthy delays. Judging from the comments I hear, and my own personal heresay, they need to come clean on flight times and sort themselves out.”

Mother-of-two Teresa Tse, 33, has also complained about Zoom’s cancellation policy. She said she cancelled her family’s flights to London on July 7 after being diagnosed with chicken pox. She telephoned the company’s call centre in Scotland but was told that if a flight was not cancelled within 29 days she could not get a refund.

“I thought it was terrible customer service,” said Mrs. Tse. “The flight was not full yet they were inflexible about the cancellation penalty. I told them I was putting their passengers’ health ahead of myself and even offered to give them an extra $500 to fly out the following Saturday.

“It was like I was being penalised for doing the right thing. If the flight was fully booked I would have accepted the penalty, but it was only half full.”

Mrs. Tse, of Smiths, said she paid $2,300 for flights for herself, her husband Lawrence, and daughters Aimee, four, and Layla, aged 20 months. Although she booked online she asked C Travel, Zoom’s agent on Bermuda, to help her and they negotiated a 75 percent refund. She is now flying to London this weekend on British Airways.

“I felt they gave me no choice,” she said. “I could have booked another ticket but they were even discouraging me from that. I was quite offended. The children almost missed their summer holidays to see their grandparents in the UK.”

However, Carl Paiva, chief executive officer of C Travel, said that most airlines would not have refunded Mrs. Tse in the circumstances. He said Zoom had been “more than generous”.

“They helped her extremely well by giving her this refund, because on any other carrier a non-refundable ticket is a non-refundable ticket. So they bent all the rules.

“I’ve been in this business for 35 years and we’ve had death certificates and airlines have refused refunds.”

He pointed out that Zoom also sells insurance on its website to protect customers from flight cancellation charges.

Mr. Paiva said the airline was in the process of updating its website and that it had expected to gain route clearance across the Atlantic a lot sooner. Without ETOPS from the Civil Aviation Authority in the UK, the airline is unable to fly a route more than 60 minutes from an emergency or diversion airport.

Mr. Paiva said that once regulators gave clearance, the flight time would be cut to between six and seven hours.

“They haven’t changed the times on their website because they were led to believe by the UK authorities that the most direct route would be forthcoming very quickly. As this has been longer than expected they are now changing the website.”

Mr. Paiva said: “There are teething problems that have unfortunately lasted longer than anticipated. Zoom are hoping to hear something within the next three weeks.”

Jonathan Hinkles, managing director of Zoom Airlines, said: “In terms of flight delays, the main cause of delay has been the longer flight times. However, we have also suffered from delays at New York JFK and these have been the result of chronic congestion there, which is affecting all airlines.

“We’ve extended the scheduled flight time on all flights between London Gatwick and Bermuda to incorporate the longer flight times up to and including August 1. We are hoping that we will hear from the UK Civil Aviation Authority about the shorter routings fairly shortly.

“Where customers have contacted us arising from any problems with Zoom flights, I believe that we have addressed any issues arising to their satisfaction and have had a number of complimentary notes both about the flights themselves; and about our customer service recovery on occasions where things have gone wrong — as they periodically will with any airline.”

Zoom operates flights to Gatwick on Tuesdays and Saturdays, at $249 for a one way ticket, tax included. The airline’s inaugural flight was on June 8.