On a wing and a prayer ... 84 elderly pilgrims stranded on shrine trip
Group ‘abandoned’ at airport after flight cancelled
IT had been a peaceful week of solemn reflection and prayer at one of the Roman Catholic Church’s most sacred sites.
But 84 elderly Scots saw their pilgrimage end in disaster after they were left stranded in an airport for 12 hours due to a cancelled flight – and then told they may not be able to get home before next week.
The pilgrims, mostly in their 70s and 80s, were left sitting on suitcases and trolleys in a crowded Portuguese airport all day after being told their flight home had been scrapped due to severe fog.
Budget airline easyJet then told them its flights from Lisbon to Edinburgh were fully booked for the next week – and that the party would have to leave in groups to make their way home via Luton, Gatwick and Milan over the coming days.
It means that some of the pilgrims – many of them elderly and frail – may not make it home until Tuesday.
The disruption came at the end of a week-long pilgrimage to Fatima, north of Lisbon, where the Virgin Mary is said to have appeared to three shepherd children in 1917.
Following their tour of sacred sites, they arrived at Lisbon airport on Thursday morning to be told their flight was cancelled.
The group was left stranded in the airport until 10pm while they waited for the airline to arrange accommodation for them.
One elderly lady had to be taken to hospital with what is thought to have been a urinary infection.
The group, whose pilgrimage was organised via the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh, were eventually taken to the nearby Corinthia Hotel.
Archbishop Leo Cushley of St Andrews and Edinburgh had been in Portugal with the group but was booked on a different flight. He was said to have been making his way back to Scotland via London last night.
Yesterday, the pilgrims were awaiting confirmation of their rearranged return flights at a hotel in Lisbon. Mary Greig, 86, from Fife, said: ‘We spent 12 hours in the airport without anything to eat. I had to sit on my suitcase.
‘There was nowhere to change our money so the dry sandwiches we got from the hotel had to last us all day. Most of the tour are elderly and some aren’t very well.
‘We were left there a long time and got one drink. I can’t believe an airline can act like that. It was like they just abandoned us. This will be the last time I ever fly.’
Group leader Father Scott Deeley said the airline did not offer the group a drink until he approached their desk at 3pm.
Fr Deeley, parish priest for South Queensferry, said: ‘There wasn’t a lot of seating so some were on their luggage or on trolleys and some just had to stand. They offered us nothing in terms of a drink until 3pm and that was only because I approached the easyJet desk and asked if we could have something.
‘The pilgrims are in good humour but we’re not going to be able to go back all together and some of us could be here for five days.’
The group had travelled to Portugal for the centenary of the Marian apparitions in Fatima, which is expected to attract as many as eight million pilgrims.
A spokesman for the Archdiocese of St Andrews and Edinburgh said: ‘The tour operator, who organised the pilgrimage, says this is the worst situation of a stranded party she’s come across in their company’s history.’
An easyJet spokesman apologised for the ‘inconvenience’.
They added: ‘EasyJet is working hard to bring all passengers back to the UK over the next few days.
‘All affected passengers have been and will be provided with hotel accommodation.’
‘This will be last time I ever fly’