An Aberdeen’s family £12,500 “dream holiday” was shattered after spending 17-and-a-half-hours waiting for a flight home.
Allan and Lisa Main said their Tui flight was ‘delayed’ after the family of seven had already made it onto the runway.
After boarding the plane, it was down to the pilot who said the flight wasn’t taking off.
Now the family are safely back in Aberdeen – two of the party have already tested positively for Covid.
Tui said that it had not cancelled the flight – it was “delayed overnight”.
The couple, from Portlethen, were on holiday with their two children, Ellie, 13, who has autism and ADHD, and Dylan, 18.
They were joined by Lisa’s mum Pamela Barber, stepdad Duncan Barber and 84-year-old Merle Symmers, who was wheelchair bound for the trip.
The holiday, which included flights from Aberdeen to Corfu, was aboard a cruise around the Eastern Mediterranean on the Tui Marella Explorer.
First holiday since Covid
The family were celebrating birthdays – Lisa’s 40th, Mrs Barber’s 60th, Mr Barber’s 50th – and Mr and Mrs Barber were also celebrating their 25th wedding anniversary.
And, their son was celebrating his 18th birthday.
This was their first holiday since Covid.
Everything was as it should have been for the family holiday itself. The ship they were on explored countries such as Slovenia and Montenegro.
Mr Main, a taxi driver, said: “We were due to arrive home at Aberdeen Airport local time at 23.55pm on Friday evening.
“At first, the flight was first delayed for three hours.
“We were priority boarding to meet the needs of my daughter and Lisa’s gran. When we were on the bus to the plane, we noticed that people were being taken back to the terminal.
“The pilot announced the flight was cancelled and we heard conflicting reasons as to why this happened.
“The captain claimed he was ‘over his flight hours’ – when in actual fact it was the cabin crew that were over their hours.
‘Empty plane’
“The captain flew the plane empty back to Aberdeen.
He continued: “There was then a period of hours where no explanation was given to us. No Tui staff were present.
“Worst of all, there was no hydration. It was not offered and there was next to no air conditioning inside an already boiling hot airport building.”
The temperature was around 32C at the airport.
Due to the lateness of the hour there were no shops open in the airport.
“My 13-year-old daughter Ellie has autism and ADHD. She did not sleep for 36-hours. She had five meltdowns due to the noise, the lack of heat and lack of ventilation, and being dehydrated.
“We were offered a box room that smelt of poo, that was completely unsuitable.”
He said: “My wife’s grandma is 84 and has dementia and alzheimer’s. She is also partially sighted and walks with a stick. She was confined to a wheelchair for the entire time we were waiting.
“At one point we were effectively kicked out of the airport and we had to collect our luggage again, and after six hours were eventually let back through security.
“A large number of passengers quite rightly refused to comply, as a lot of young children and elderly people were fast asleep.
“I have never witnessed anything so chaotic in all my years of travelling.”
He added: “We were away for a week. It was a brilliant holiday until we got back to the airport. This story has to be told as it is not right that people were treated like this.
‘Inhumane’
“There was no dignity for anyone, we were treated like cattle. It was inhumane.”
A spokeswoman for Tui said: “We’re really sorry to customers travelling on flight TOM1585 from Corfu to Aberdeen on July 22 which was unfortunately delayed as a result of knock-on operational disruption.
“The crew for this flight was impacted by an earlier delay which meant they were outside their mandatory operating hours and needed to rest before operating the flight from Corfu.
“Our teams were handing out bottles of water and meal vouchers to affected customers at Corfu Airport and we kept them up to date with text messages while we worked on a new flight plan.
“Regretfully, a lack of hotel availability in the area meant we couldn’t source any overnight accommodation for customers as we normally would in these circumstances.”
Compensation
She continued: “Customers are entitled to EU 261 compensation and details of how to claim have also been provided.
“We do everything we can to get customers away as planned and, while instances like this are rare, we recognise we fell short of our usually high standards and apologise again.”
She reiterated that the flight was delayed overnight, not cancelled. She also said all passengers will receive an extra goodwill gesture from Tui for the inconvenience.
Conversation