Like thousands of others caught up in Monday’s air traffic control chaos, Swarna Khare is more than £1,000 out of pocket. However, she claims her case has been made substantially worse after she used an online agent to buy a last-minute replacement flight from Rome back to London – only to find that it appeared to have been massively oversold, denying her boarding for a second time.
The 35-year-old pharmaceutical executive from Woking had spent a week travelling around Italy and was scheduled to fly back from Rome with British Airways at 9pm on Monday evening. She first learned that the UK air traffic control system had crashed when a friend called her as she travelled to the airport. When BA later cancelled the flight, Khare says, she was one of hundreds of passengers left stranded, with no help offered by either the airline, or airport staff.
She managed to grab one of the last remaining rooms at the Hilton hotel, paying almost €300 (£258), about double the normal rate. Needing to be back at work, she was delighted when she found what seemed to be an Iberia/Vueling ticket on Booking.com on Tuesday, for which she paid £252. At this point she cancelled the BA replacement flight she had been offered on Friday.
“When I got back to the airport on Tuesday I was one of a number of people who were denied boarding because the flight had been oversold and we were not even on the passenger list,” says Khare.
“I was made to run around between Iberia and Vueling counters and told to call the Iberia call centre to get a solution. They told me to ask Vueling who then told me to call Iberia or Booking.com. I missed the flight along with at least 15 other UK passengers who had bought the similar ticket as me and couldn’t be found on the passenger list. I was in tears, out of money, nowhere to go with each of the companies saying there is nothing they can do. There were children and elderly people in our group, all clearly devastated.”
A spokesperson for Booking.com said it was a “complicated” situation and that it was now investigating what had gone wrong.
“We take any complaint seriously and are currently looking into the details raised,” they said.
Unwilling to keep paying the inflated airport hotel charges, Khare says she is now back in Rome city centre, and trying to do as much work as she can using her mobile phone. She has since booked a third flight with easyJet on Friday, paying a further €380, and is desperately hoping it will go ahead.
“The whole episode has been a nightmare. I’m more than £1,000 out of pocket and I am still furious that I was sold a ticket for a flight that was already sold out, with no one willing to take responsibility. I will never use one of these online travel agents again,” she says.
