Check in at Alicante took 1.5 hours due to the large number of people waiting for the Airbus A300, and the lack of personnel.

We saw on the departures board that the plane was delayed. No information was available as to the length of the delay.

After waiting for about 45 minutes, they passed around handouts telling us that our flight was now split into two, with two differnt flight numbers, again no explanation as to why this was happening, or how long we would have to wait.

The facts filtered through after we had been waiting two hours. The A300 had broken down and two separate planes, of smaller capacity, had to be diverted. This did not come from Monarch staff, who were conspicuous by their absence, but from passengers who went to the Iberia desk (Iberia personnel handled the check in).

We eventually boarded six hours late, no offer of meals or drinks was made, we had to pay ourselves. After take off, staff came round asking if we wanted to watch in flight television, and after the delay you would think they would let you do this for free, but no, they want to charge you! I complained bitterly about this, but they still insisted a charge was appropriate to watch old BBC repeats. As you may have guessed, no offer of free drinks was made either to in some way compensate passengers for waiting an extra six hours - What a lot of stinkers! Fly with Monarch again? NO WAY!