Nightmare for Rose in US ‘cyclone bomb’ chaos
A FORMER Rose of Tralee contestant and her boyfriend were among hundreds of Irish travellers forced to sleep on the floor of New York’s JFK Airport after their flight to Dublin was cancelled due to severe weather called a ‘cyclone bomb’.
Caroline Doyle, 26, a teacher in Granard, Co. Longford, represented the county at the 2016 Rose of Tralee, capturing the nation’s attention when she demonstrated her kickboxing skills on host Dáithí Ó Sé. Her partner Johnny Casey, who plays hurling for Longford, will line out today in the Kehoe Cup clash with DCU, after a 48-hour wait to get back into the country.
But after touching down in Dublin yesterday morning, their tale of woe continued as their luggage was lost in transit.
The couple had been visiting the Big Apple to celebrate Johnny’s 28th birthday on Wednesday.
Caroline said: ‘The snow was that heavy there was no way our friend’s car would have got to the airport, so we rang a specialist company which hires out 4X4s and give you a driver, and they got us to the departures area of JFK at 5pm.
‘At 8pm, an hour before we were meant to take off, it flashed on screen that it was cancelled. There was no announcement, nobody from Delta came to speak us, it was just put up on the screen. After an hour spent pleading, fighting and cajoling they agreed to put us on a flight to Amsterdam at 9.55pm, but within 20 minutes it was cancelled.
‘If they had cancelled the flights earlier and given us adequate notice we could have stayed where we were and not ended up sleeping on the floor of an airport.’
Hundreds of Irish passengers are believed to have been affected by the delay – and also arrived home without luggage. A spokesman for Delta Airlines told the Irish Mail on Sunday: Our customer care team is engaged to ensure our customers are taken care of and reunited with their checked luggage.’