Airport blunder made me miss London event: charity worker

A CO Down charity worker was forced to pull out of a national charity event in London after the wrong gate number appeared on the flight board at Belfast International Airport.

Diane Holt from Newtownards was supposed to provide vital training to dozens of Tearfund staff at an annual gathering in London on Wednesday.

But the Thrive Ireland employee was left devastated after an airport blunder forced her to pull out of the event which had sought to advance community and Church engagement in Africa as part of a bid to tackle extreme poverty.

“The Tuesday night flight had been delayed and when the gate number was finally displayed it said 17, so we went straight there — I even double checked on the way,” she said. “Around 12 people left the queue at one point and rushed off but it is only in hindsight that I suspect they realised the mistake.”

The married mother-of-two was left speechless after quizzing other passengers about where they were travelling only to.

“They were all going to Bristol,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it — there were no signs at the gate to state the destination and no member of staff ever came to inform anyone that they were at the wrong gate.”

Mrs Holt and three other abandoned passengers made a frantic dash along the corridor

Charity worker Diane Holt (second from right) had been due to provide staff training in London

to find the correct gate but they were left “gobsmacked” by what transpired.

“It was closed, but the plane was still there,” Mrs Holt recalled. “We begged a member of staff to ask the pilot to let us on and he went to check — we were gobsmacked when he said no.

“I don’t know if he was in a bad mood or it was a regulation thing, but in the time it took for the easyJet employee to go and ask, we could have all been on the plane.”

Mrs Holt slammed the airliner for closing its customer help desk at the “ungodly hour of

9.30pm” before all of its flights had departed as she described the “chaos” and “pettiness” she experienced at the airport.

“That’s where we were told to go as the 6.15am flight could have been an option, but no one was there to help us and I couldn’t get through on the phone which charges 55p a minute,” she said.

“I ended up going home because I had no way to check availability on the first flight out the following morning.”

Mrs Holt said that even if she is offered a refund, it can never compensate for the major setback to the small Belfast-based charity which was birthed out of Tearfund in 2015.

An easyJet spokesperson denied that any error occurred and said the passengers went to the wrong gate.

But Mrs Holt questioned why more than a dozen people made the same mistake.

“We can’t all be wrong,” she said.