Family abandoned at Florida airport
Sunshine holiday marred by ‘journey from hell’
A SCOTS family have vowed never to fly with Thomas Cook again after a flight to Florida became a stormy ‘journey from hell’.
Hundreds of passengers became caught up in lengthy delays in the US after bad weather forced the Glasgow to Orlando flight on Saturday to divert to Tampa Airport at the last minute.
The Airbus A330-243, capable of carrying 335 passengers, refuelled at the airport. As it was about to take off for Orlando, a female passenger became ill and the aircraft returned to the terminal building.
Not only was the sick woman removed from the plane along with her family but the entire passenger list was asked to disembark as well.
Freelance public relations consultant Laura Lironi was travelling with her husband Brian, 43, corporate affairs director for Scottish Water and their daughters Lucy, five and Hannah, six.
Mrs Lironi, 42, from Glasgow, said: ‘It was utterly shocking. We were abandoned at that airport.
‘They took us off that plane, not knowing what to do with us. There were no Thomas Cook staff at the airport and they didn’t send anyone to help. The air crew were out of hours and could not staff a replacement flight to Orlando.
‘We were kept in a holding pen for three hours. We had no water, no access to food. We were already tired after an eight-hour flight from Glasgow but everyone ended up shattered as the delay went on. I saw some people literally shaking with disbelief. Mothers were unable to feed their babies.’
It is understood ground handling agents bungled by taking the passengers through Customs and Immigration, rather than keeping them ‘airside’ at Tampa Airport.
This meant the whole plane needed to check in again for the diverted flight to Orlando.
However, Thomas Cook has no check-in facilities at the airport so the company had to try to arrange for buses to transport them the 85 miles by road to Orlando.
The Lironi family took one look at the queue for buses and decided to hire a car.
Mrs Lironi added: ‘We will never fly with Thomas Cook again. We will fly back with Virgin instead.
‘Today should have been the first day of our holiday, when we were booked to go to one of the theme parks. Instead, we had to leave our girls with friends and drive to Orlando to return our hire car.
‘The start to everyone’s holiday has been ruined. You can’t help the weather and you can’t stop someone falling ill. But Thomas Cook did not handle it.’
A Thomas Cook spokesman said: ‘Due to bad weather our flight from Glasgow had to divert to Tampa. It’s not one of our regular airports, so we don’t have a presence on the ground and our customers experienced some delays to the onward journey to Orlando.
‘We’re sorry for the inconvenience this caused.’