Passengers reportedly tried to rip open a door to get at their luggage as they endured a travel nightmare with TUI. They snapped in the Birmingham Airport baggage reclaim after first seeing their flight home from Turkey delayed for four hours and then diverted 150 miles to the Midlands.
Police were said to have been involved in calming tempers. Some of the desperate travellers resorted to booking taxis despite the distance involved, BirminghamLive was told.
This was after they finally landed at roughly 3am today, Saturday, July 9 - but then faced a four-hour wait for their luggage to be unloaded. Another wait followed for transport back to Norwich - their original destination.
TUI passengers surrounded an airline rep in Birmingham's baggage hall after hours of waiting by a carousel, reports BirminghamLive. The company admitted it had let down the passengers, and offered a discount on another break.
One couple said they would never travel with the firm again. Catherine Arnold, 40, told how passengers resorted to sleeping on the floor, while some even tried to force open a door to fetch their own luggage after growing tired of waiting.
She said police arrived to "defuse the situation" outside the terminal as tensions flared. Families then queued for "up to an hour" for taxis to take them back to Norwich.
"We were already delayed by over four hours by the time we got on the flight," said Catherine, who was travelling with her partner Tom, 41. "The stewardess came on and said we couldn't fly back to Norwich anymore because it was too late at night, so we'd be diverting to Birmingham. There were a lot of moans and groans.
"When we got to Birmingham to go and fetch our suitcases, the bags didn't come out. It was horrendous because there were no staff in the room. We were stuck in there for four hours in total with pretty much no communication."
Travellers had just boarded the TOM713 from Dalaman after a four-hour delay in the early hours of Saturday morning, July 9, when they were told the plane would be going to Birmingham. After landing at BHX, holidaymakers faced another long wait to receive their bags; TUI apologised to customers in a text, citing a ramp failure for the delay.
TUI said passengers on the TOM713 were entitled to claim EU 261 compensation and would receive an extra gesture of goodwill for their inconvenience. The airline said an investigation would be carried out into the precise cause of the delays.
Catherine said: "There was no TUI rep there until around 7am and we landed at 3.20am. It was bad enough for us - everyone was tired and fed up - but there were people there with young children.
"I saw one woman begging for her pushchair for her baby, saying: 'I don't care about my bags, please can I just have my pushchair, I can't hold her anymore'. She had to lie her little one down to sleep on the floor in the end."
"A guy from TUI turned up at the 11th hour and even then we weren't told much," said Catherine. "People weren't happy.
"When we finally got out, we were told there would be coaches waiting for us, but when we got outside there were only about six taxis there. The majority of us were left standing on the kerb for up to an hour.
"People started to get a bit fed up at that point and it got quite heated. The police came over and were trying to defuse the situation.
"There was one couple I really felt for. They were probably in their 60s and the gentleman had late-stage cancer. They ended up paying for their own taxi home because he clearly wasn't well and they'd had enough of waiting.
"We should have been home and in bed by midnight but we only walked through the door at midday. Quite laughably, TUI sent us an email to say sorry and to offer us a £150 voucher off our next TUI holiday, which I thought was a kick in the teeth. We'll never be flying with TUI again after this."
A spokesperson said: "We’re really sorry to customers travelling on TOM713 from Dalaman to Norwich Airport, which was initially delayed due to an earlier flight delay because of bad weather. We then had to divert the aircraft to Birmingham Airport due to the curfew at Norwich Airport.
"Delays with baggage reclaim and transfers at Birmingham meant customers were unfortunately waiting at the airport much longer than they should have. We're investigating how this happened to prevent it from happening again.
"We've arranged transport for all customers who are now on their way back to Norwich and we've been in contact with them to apologise, explain how to claim compensation and provide a gesture of goodwill. We realise this isn't the level of service our customers usually receive and for that, we are sorry."
