A grandma's trip to a family wedding abroad nearly ended in disaster after she ended up being taken to the wrong country by a budget airline.
Wheelchair-bound Joan Winter, 89, only found out about the mistake when she got to passport control. The Mirror reports that Joe was supposed to be flying from London Luton airport on April 9 to Slovenian capital city Ljubljana for her grandson Aaron's wedding at Lake Bled.
However, it was not until Joan and her daughter, Hayley Vickery, 58, touched down that they discovered they had actually ended up in the Polish city of Poznan, 680 miles away from Ljubljana. This all happened despite checking in properly and even speaking to airport staff about Slovenia.
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The other half of their party, who were on the right plane, learned mid-flight that Joan and Hayley weren't sitting in the designated disability access zone. With no phone charger or medication for her mum, Hayley spent a frantic 24 hours and hundreds of pounds working out how to get to Slovenia in time for her son's wedding two days later.
Hayley said: "It was all stress, we were away for a week in total and Wizz Air still haven't been in touch.
"My mother was terrible. She didn't have her medication and was without it from the Saturday to the Tuesday. Everybody was besides themselves."
Joan and Hayley's journey began on April 8, when they travelled to Luton to stay in a hotel. After arriving at the airport mum and daughter were separated from their group and taken to gate 20, in anticipation of them sitting in an accessible part of the plane.
All went smoothly until they touched down. Hayley said: "We showed our passports at the gate and they asked if we had been to Poland before.
"I said 'yes why?' It was because we were in Poznań."
When the rest of the party discovered Joan and Hayley were missing, they were told it would be impossible to send a message to them and that no one could be sent to meet them at the other end - as it was unclear where they were. For three-and-a-half hours, the despairing pair sat in the airport trying to work out what to do, with no offers of help or refreshment coming from members of staff.
Eventually, after many attempts to ring Wizz Air's premium rate phone number, they were told to either book a hotel in Poland or fly back to Luton - the latter option meaning they would likely miss Aaron's wedding. Instead they decided to stay the night in Poznań before jumping in a £270 taxi to Warsaw, where they boarded a flight to Ljubljana which had cost them close to £700.
There they were reunited with their luggage including wedding outfits, which had been taken off the Wizz Air flight in Luton. Hayley said: "We have had no contact with Wizz Air at all.
"In a really volatile Europe we were boarded onto a plane to Poland and no one knew where we were. We were close to the border with Ukraine. I would like Wizz Air to apologise and explain what happened, and a full refund."
The Mirror has contacted Wizz Air for comment.
