A dad slammed travel providers after his family holiday to Crete was cancelled at the last minute.
Ian McStein, 43, of Runcorn, was looking forward to a fortnight in Crete, departing on May 29, but was caught up in the chaos engulfing Manchester Airport.
Dad-of-four Ian said not only did they endure horrendous waits, they were then moved onto another flight and had to catch a taxi back home before returning the next day when the chaos continued.
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The debacle culminated in the McSteins cancelling their holiday after Tui told them they couldn’t fly because there weren’t enough seats on the plane.
He said pictures on a passenger WhatsApp group showed this wasn’t the case and there were more than enough empty spaces for his family.
With the holiday in ruins, he then pursued a refund via his bank because the service hadn’t been delivered, but he was initially told he couldn’t have one despite the application making progress in the background, and On The Beach said he would have to wait “another month, maybe eight weeks”.
The McSteins' story is one among the many told by passengers caught up in recent travel problems, which have been blamed on chronic staff shortages.
Ian, who spoke out after reading articles featuring fellow passengers from his flight, told the ECHO: “We got there four hours early, we’d heard about the queues. The first plane we couldn’t fly on, don’t know why.
“The second plane we couldn’t fly on, it didn’t have bottled water. And then next, we sat on the runway for three-and-a-half hours.
“The pilot didn’t have enough air time, enough flying hours. This was 2am or 3am in the morning. We’re waiting to get through security, it took two hours.
“In the end the police had to come, not to calm us down, no-one was kicking off, it was broken (to us) by the police - there were no Tui reps whatsoever apart from the police - they told us our flight time was the next day at 12.45pm.
“We got there at 9am. Tui passengers had a special gate to go and check in.
“We were all pretty happy to be fair that we had a special gate, we all got through check-in and security pretty fast, went down to the gate.
“Most of the passengers went down to the gate, we were all made up. We were flying on a Tui Dreamliner.
“It was 45 minutes before boarding, 16 passengers got a text message to say ‘we are really sorry for the disruption to your journey, the aircraft is smaller than originally scheduled, which resulted in us having to remove some of our customers from today’s flight. We are sorry to confirm you are one of these’.”
With no reps available Ian asked to speak to a manager who insisted the plane was too small but “went red in the face” when Ian said how many spare seats the flight had.
Ian said: “He went red in the face and said ‘there’s been a mess up here’. We got cancelled because there ‘wasn’t enough room’ on that plane.
“There were 30 (empty) seats.”
The ECHO contacted TUI over the debacle.
A spokeswoman for the company said: “We would like to apologise to Mr McStein and his family.
“The aircraft originally scheduled for flight TOM2744 from Manchester to Heraklion on Sunday, May 29 was changed at the last minute due to operational issues, impacting a small number of customers.
“We contacted everyone as soon as we became aware of the change, offering the option to cancel their holiday for a full refund.
“We understand how frustrating and disappointing this will have been and are very sorry for the inconvenience caused.”
An On The Beach spokesperson said: "We're sorry to hear about Mr McStein's experience following the late cancellation of his TUI flight.
"We have spoken to Mr McStein and we have offered him a full refund in line with EU regulations.”
