A dad was left with just a pair of swimming shorts on a TUI holiday after his suitcase was lost by the baggage handlers.
Paul Hesp and his family had been looking forward to the luxury £6k all-inclusive getaway to Majorca. The 41-year-old, who has ADHD, needs to fold and iron his clothes in a specific way, meaning the only clothing item he kept in his hand luggage was a pair of trunks.
However, after touching down on the Spanish island, he was discovered his luggage has been misplaced by airport staff - leaving him with nothing but the clothes on his back and the swimmers in his carry-on. His family, including five adults and four children, had got through security and passport control at Manchester Airport with no problems and their flight was only delayed by 55 minutes, the Mirror reports.
But when they got to baggage claim in Majorca, the problems began to start.
Paul and his sister-in-law's bags did not appear on the carousel. "We flew out on Tuesday (July, 26) and dropped cases at Manchester Airport on Monday night, thinking it’ll help them out and being aware of the issues," he said.
"The flight was delayed by 55 mins but we were okay with that. The issue s came at Majorca Airport when two of the cases didn’t appear on the baggage carousel, one of the cases in question being mine. I had packed a small number of items into our other two cases but did take a gamble."
All Paul had was the shirt and shorts he had on at the time and a pair of swimming shorts. "In the hope the case would be with us within our possession in 24 hours, we got ourselves to our hotel," he continued.
"All TUI will offer is £25 per day for a maximum of three days, how mad is this?
"I’m on a 14-day holiday and I have to then go out and buy clothes with that pitiful amount. I've spent £150 on new clothes.
"Obviously, our travel insurance may provide extra, but that is a claim I’m yet to make - I have spoken to them to confirm how to proceed. I spoke to the head rep who basically told me the situation at Manchester was so broken that I needed to lower my expectations and accept the fact that this case was not going to appear for the duration of our holiday.
"Two weeks all inclusive £6,000 bare this in mind - I found this staggering. I’d bought most of the items specifically for the holiday, including ironing every single one."
Since Paul's case went missing he has emailed, phoned and tweeted TUI and Manchester Airport every day, and said when he tried to contact Swissport, he realised they "don't take inbound calls". Paul said: "We’ve been in resort which is now ten days and they have stopped responding to my emails now.
"This (the holiday) had been cancelled in 2020 due to Covid so we were desperate for it to go well. I have no definite information where this case is, if it is even in Manchester Airport or travelled on a different flight somewhere else, the head rep stated that the global package location system is also shot, so the barcode for the missing case is pretty much worthless.
"TUI customer service is literally non existent. People need to be aware that the situation is completely f****d and their holidays that they have paid fortunes for could be ruined also. I’m hitting brick walls everywhere."
A spokesperson from TUI said: "We’re very sorry to hear about the issues Mr Hesp has had with his luggage. We are urgently investigating this with our baggage handler to find out exactly what happened and our team in resort will be in touch with the customer as soon as possible today to help resolve the issue."
Manchester Airport was recently the subject of a Channel 4 documentary which saw a journalist go undercover as a baggage handler. They witnessed desperate passengers crawling through luggage conveyor belts in an attempt to get into the airside area to locate luggage they had been waiting on for hours.
In response to the programme and claims of chaos, they said: "The whole aviation industry has faced challenges in recovering from the pandemic, but we have worked hard since the start of the year to prepare for the peak summer season. For our part, we have recruited more than 600 new staff into our security operation and nearly 300 more are due to start work in the weeks ahead.
"This means we have not had to ask our airlines to cancel large numbers of flights, protecting the holidays of more than three million people who will travel through Manchester Airport this summer. We are confident that, thanks to the progress we have made, the overwhelming majority will have a positive experience."
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