A mum-of-two has vowed never to holiday with TUI again after her holiday was cut 16 hours short when her flight had to make an emergency return to the UK.
Stacey Young, 37, claims the holiday giant refused to issue a refund, despite arriving at the £2,000 all-inclusive resort in Gran Canaria with her partner and two children later than planned.
The family arrived almost 17 hours late after their flight had to return back to Newcastle on May 4, and blames a 'catalogue of errors' for the delay.
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Stacey, from the North East, claims the plane had been in the air for two hours when it was announced it would be returning to Newcastle 'somewhere over France' because the pilot had fallen ill, Chronicle Live reports.
On returning to the airport, passengers on the flight found out that they would not be leaving until the following day, with those who needed it put up in hotels.
However, Stacey says that the Hilton DoubleTree, where her family had been put up, weren't able to cope with the demand, with them unable to use the £20 food voucher that all passengers had been given and going to bed hungry.
When checking her phone in the early hours of the morning, she saw that TUI had sent an email at 12.30am informing them of their new flight time of 7.30am on May 5. Though Stacey and her family arrived at the airport on time, she suspects that some passengers may have missed the email.
Sales advisor Stacey told ChronicleLive: "If the pilot was that ill, why did we travel a further two hours back to Newcastle when it was a four-hour flight to Gran Canaria? We could have flown the entire way and landed, had our holiday and everything would have been fine, and if the pilot had needed to go to hospital in Gran Canaria, he could have done that.
"Instead, they turned the plane around, bypassed every single hospital on the way to Newcastle, then proceeded to circle around for another half an hour burning off fuel before landing and letting all the passengers and their luggage off.
"At this point, nobody knew what was going on, nobody was talking to us - I just don't understand why we endured a four-and-a-half hour flight to be no further forward, and if the pilot was that bad, why didn't we land at the nearest airport so he could get to hospital?"
Despite returning to their starting point and not arriving in Gran Canaria until the following day, Stacey claims TUI has refused to pay compensation. They have cited European Regulation EC261/2004, which states that airlines may have to pay compensation when experiencing a delay of over three hours on arrival, but only if the delay wasn't caused by "extraordinary circumstances".
With the medical grounds of a "passenger or crew member becomes seriously ill or dies on-board at short notice before the flight" TUI have considered this as extraordinary circumstances. However, Stacey feels that the airline should accept responsibility for the flight being returned to Newcastle.
She continued: "It was classed as exceptional circumstances but we were delayed for almost 17 hours and missed a day of our holiday, how is that okay?
"If they'd just say yes, we understand that you've missed your holiday, it would have been okay. Holidays are expensive, families spend an entire year paying for them, and they're just saying nah, you get nothing."
And Stacey says that the hellish journey "took the shine off" their holiday. She finished: "We just wanted to get on with our holiday and enjoy it as much as we could but we felt like it had been cut short, because it had.
"We felt a little bit rushed because we felt pressured to go on an excursion as we arrived, rather than have time to settle in. Although we enjoyed our holiday, of course we did, it just took the shine off it."
ChronicleLive has approached TUI several times for a comment but at the time of publication they have not provided a response.
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