A couple trying to get back home to Bristol from a holiday in Corfu have told how the planes sent as part of the ‘repatriation flights’ following the Thomas Cook collapse were too small.
It meant hundreds of holiday-makers are being left stranded for days - because there was not enough room for them on the planes sent to bring them home.
Lisa and Anthony Brown have described the chaotic scenes at Corfu Airport, as holidaymakers were told to turn up for the ‘repatriation flights’, only to discover only some of them would be able to board.
The couple were supposed to return to Bristol Airport from Corfu on Thursday last week, September 26.
While they were on holiday, the Thomas Cook travel firm collapsed and, even though they had booked with package firm On The Beach, it was a Thomas Cook flight - and it was a flight that now no longer existed.
The day before - last Wednesday - the Civil Aviation Authority published flights back from Corfu for the passengers who were due to return on a Thomas Cook flight the next day, and listed the Browns’ flight as taking off at 8.20pm.
On that Thursday morning there was a mad scramble when the time of the flight was brought forward to 3pm, and the couple - and all the others expecting to board it - arrived to check in at lunchtime.
“We stood in the check-in queue only to be herded to a corner of the airport and told to wait to see if there was a seat for us,” said Lisa.
“Other people were called seemingly randomly and put on the flight, including a passenger who had cut his holiday short as he was due back on October 3.
“We were then told there were no seats left, and left in the corner,” she added.
The Browns and the rest of the left-behinds waited in the corner of the airport, and grew in number, as more arrived - including those who had not been notified that the flight time had been brought forward.
Eventually, at 8.45pm, after nine hours in the airport, they were all taken to a hotel for the night with the promise of the possibility of a flight home the next day.
Eventually, the couple arrived back on Sunday - some three days later, and at Birmingham, rather than Bristol - and said the arrangements to repatriate holidaymakers were less than ideal.
“There ended up being 54 people holed up in the hotel on Saturday - thankfully everyone in our party got home eventually although some passengers had their luggage left in Corfu - like they needed anything else to go wrong,” she added.
