Stranded OAP John hit with £2k bill to fly ill wife home
Husband tells of ordeal during Spanish lockdown
BY SARAH VESTY sarah.vesty@reachplc.com
A SCOTS pensioner was forced to fork out nearly £2000 to stop him and his ill wife being left stranded and homeless in the Canary Islands.
John and Ellen Begley had been enjoying a three-month holiday in Fuerteventura when the coronavirus struck and the island was placed on lockdown.
They had been due to return to their home in Uddingston, Lanarkshire, on a Ryanair flight booked for March 29 but found themselves stuck after it was axed.
The Spanish authorities then announced a countrywide closure of all accommodation, which left John frantically searching for a replacement travel plan.
After their second Ryanair booking was cancelled without notice, the 69-year-old was forced to book with Jet2 – whose price doubled within minutes of him selecting the flight.
His concern for Ellen, 67, who suffers from chronic lung disease COPD and pancreatitis, meant the retired union worker had no choice but to pay the fee.
John said yesterday: “We got home this morning and it was just a relief more than anything else. It was just a terrible time over the last week.
“We were on lockdown from last Saturday but we were booked to come home on the 29th, so that was fine.
“Rumours started that the flight wasn’t going and they may even shut the airspace. I looked at our booking and it said we had been ‘unchecked’.
“But Ryanair said not to call them because they were too busy and we were to use an online chatroom.
“I must have spent about 20 hours looking at flights.
“On the first day, I spent five hours waiting for a reply but our flight had been cancelled so the next day I had to start again.” John was able to rebook a different flight with Ryanair and breathed a sigh of relief that they would get home safely. But then other holidaymakers told them it had also been cancelled, despite him not receiving notification.
He said: “I kept checking and a wee line came up below saying there had been an alteration to our flight.
“I went in and our flight had been cancelled and we had two options, to change our flight or get a refund.
“A refund wasn’t a lot of good to us, so I took the change flight option. I put in that we were going to Edinburgh and the first flight was April 23. I tried the other airlines and the only one I could get was Jet2. They were flying on Saturday, so I went to book two seats to Glasgow. It came up as being €780 for the two of us.
“I wasn’t going to pay that but Ellen said to just do it because she needed to go home. She was getting quite upset and unwell by this point.
“I went to press the button to pay and it came up that due to demand, we had lost the price and our new price was €1850.
“I came out to tell Ellen but she was sitting crying so I decided to book it.” Reflecting on the lockdown, John told how police and Army personnel were patrolling the streets.
He said: “If you went to the shops, the police stopped you and they wanted your receipt to check the time you had bought your messages so you couldn’t go anywhere else.
“We got letters saying the accommodation was being closed and if you were found to still be there, you would be removed by the police.
“We got a taxi to take us to the airport but the driver came and said he would only take one at a time. So Ellen got in and I had to get another to take us to the airport.
“I’ve never experienced anything like this in my life.”
A Jet2 spokesman said: “We have suspended our award-winning flights and holidays until the end of April and our last flights to the UK departed from Fuerteventura yesterday, which created a lot of unprecedented demand, causing prices to fluctuate much more than normal.”
An automated email reply from Ryanair said: “Due to the Covid-19 crisis, we are dealing with customerfocused communications.
“The Ryanair press office won’t respond to media queries at present.”