'Manchester Airport chaos caused us to miss ruby wedding anniversary flight and fork out another £600 to salvage trip'
08.04.2022 - 08:37
/ manchestereveningnews.co.uk
A family missed their Barcelona flight to celebrate a Ruby wedding anniversary due to Manchester Airport queues - and say they had to fork out £614 for new tickets to salvage their trip. Mike Turner, 41, had travelled to the hub from Stockport with his husband Luke Hartbottle and parents Tom and Marie Turner, on a special holiday to celebrate 40 years since their marriage. The easyJet tickets, he says, had set him back around £630.
However, Mike claims that a wait for baggage check-in, security queues which snaked into the airport, as well as a further delay at the baggage scanners meant they arrived at the gate too late to catch their flight. Mike managed to get new tickets to fly one-way eight hours later with Vueling for another £614.25, but he says the delay has marred their getaway - and made them miss a specially planned day trip.
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Teacher Mike, 41, said: “It just felt like this trip we’d been planning for years for my mum and dad, with a nice hotel and tickets for the Sagrada Familia was scuppered for something that wasn’t our fault.
“It was already two years late because of Covid. I did really feel for the staff, the woman at the gate was very apologetic but said the plane had to go and the pilot couldn’t wait any longer. Our bags had been taken off.”
Mike says during their wait at the airport for their Plan B flight, they met passengers who missed their trips to Croatia, and two couples who didn’t make their plane to Palma, again due to security delays. It comes as staff shortages have caused weeks of chaos and their ordeal happened the day before Andy