Stranded teacher eviscerates easyJet after draining life savings on 11-day flight delay
An exhausted Brit stranded abroad by an air traffic system failure has been left ‘completely penniless’ after he was forced to drain his life savings to fly home from Gran Canaria.
Adam Burke, 31, has claimed easyJet left passengers ‘on their own’ after his flight back to Bristol airport was one of hundreds cancelled due to an IT fault in the UK’s air traffic control system.
The next flight the airline offered was on September 9 to Gatwick – leaving stranded passengers scrambling to pay for an earlier trip home and accommodation.
Speaking to Metro.co.uk, the primary school teacher said: ‘It’s horrendous, it’s an absolute shambles – we are literally by ourselves.
‘My savings have been completely wiped out, and we have had to borrow money from our parents, which has of course put them in a difficult situation.
‘It will take us a year to save up that money again. We have just bought our first home, and those savings were there in case anything should happen to it.’
Mr Burke said he and his partner spent a night on the airport floor before booking their own hotel and new flights with Jet2 for Monday, at a cost of £1,500 – £750 each.
‘There were around 100 people sleeping on the airport floor the first night, but half way through the second day we realised we were on our own,’ he said.
‘We had to borrow money from my dad to afford the hotel. The accommodation easyJet offered us was on the other side of the island, and they didn’t arrange a way for us to get there.
‘But at this point we just really wanted some food and water, because we weren’t given any vouchers at all whilst we slept on the airport floor for the night.’
The couple, from Worcester, are also having to fork out an extra £105 to cover the cost of their parked car at Bristol airport.
‘It’s £15 a day at the car park in Bristol, but now we are here an extra week, that has added onto what we have already lost,’ Mr Burke said.
They plan to try and claim back as much money as possible, but so far they have had little to no communication from easyJet.
‘We got sent an email saying where our accommodation was, but that’s been it. There is no representative at Gran Canaria airport,’ he said.
‘This whole situation is out of our control and we shouldn’t be expected to pay this much.
‘On Monday night we saw people from other airlines get put on a coach to a hotel for the night, and they have since flown home.
‘I won’t even be back home in time to meet my reception class starting school for the first time.’
EasyJet said: ‘The impact of the ATC systems failure on Monday was significant, affecting tens of thousands of customers. Our teams have been working around the clock since then to help our customers as quickly as possible.
‘As this is one of the busiest weeks of the year this is very challenging however we are providing hotel accommodation where it is available and operating additional repatriation flights as well as larger aircraft on many routes.
‘While this was outside of our control we are sorry for the difficulty this caused for Mr Burke and we are in touch to ensure he is reimbursed promptly.’
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