A family boarded three different planes as they looked forward to a holiday in Crete. But after they were caught up in the airport chaos that has swept the country, the fortnight break now been cancelled.
Ian McStein, 43, of Runcorn, and his family, were looking forward to their two weeks in the sun, departing on May 29, but instead ended up enduring chaos at Manchester Airport. Ian, a dad-of-four, said they endured horrendous waits as well, reports the LiverpoolECHO.
The farce eventually ended when the McSteins cancelled their holiday after operator TUI said they couldn't fly because the plane was full. But Ian said he had been shown pictures via a passenger WhatsApp group that showed there was space.
Having given up on the holiday, Ian pursued a refund via his bank in respect of the service paid for not being delivered. But he said he was initially told he couldn’t have one despite the application making progress in the background.
Meanwhile On The Beach, with whom he booked the trip, said he would have to wait “another month, maybe eight weeks”. The problems experienced by the family - and many other travellers - have been blamed on chronic staff shortages at various points in the system that gets planes on their way, from ground staff to air crew.
Ian, who spoke out after reading articles featuring fellow passengers from his flight, told the ECHO: “We got there four hours early, we’d heard about the queues. The first plane we couldn’t fly on, don’t know why.
“The second plane we couldn’t fly on, it didn’t have bottled water. And then next, we sat on the runway for three-and-a-half hours.
“The pilot didn’t have enough air time, enough flying hours. This was 2am or 3am in the morning. We’re waiting to get through security, it took two hours.
“In the end the police had to come, not to calm us down, no-one was kicking off, it was broken (to us) by the police - there were no TUI reps whatsoever apart from the police - they told us our flight time was the next day at 12.45pm.
“We got there at 9am. TUI passengers had a special gate to go and check in.
“We were all pretty happy to be fair that we had a special gate, we all got through check-in and security pretty fast, went down to the gate.
“Most of the passengers went down to the gate, we were all made up. We were flying on a TUI Dreamliner.
“It was 45 minutes before boarding, 16 passengers got a text message to say ‘we are really sorry for the disruption to your journey, the aircraft is smaller than originally scheduled, which resulted in us having to remove some of our customers from today’s flight. We are sorry to confirm you are one of these’.”
With no reps available Ian asked to speak to a manager who insisted the plane was too small but “went red in the face” when Ian said how many spare seats the flight had.
Ian said: “He went red in the face and said ‘there’s been a mess up here’. We got cancelled because there ‘wasn’t enough room’ on that plane. There were 30 (empty) seats.”
The ECHO contacted TUI over the debacle. A spokesperson for the company said: “We would like to apologise to Mr McStein and his family. The aircraft originally scheduled for flight TOM2744 from Manchester to Heraklion on Sunday, May 29, was changed at the last minute due to operational issues, impacting a small number of customers.
“We contacted everyone as soon as we became aware of the change, offering the option to cancel their holiday for a full refund. We understand how frustrating and disappointing this will have been and are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.”
An On The Beach spokesperson said: "We're sorry to hear about Mr McStein's experience following the late cancellation of his TUI flight. We have spoken to Mr McStein and we have offered him a full refund in line with EU regulations.”
