Thomas Cook apologises for 54-hour delay
Thomas Cook has apologised to customers who suffered a 54-delay getting home from their holiday in Turkey.
The holidaymakers left their hotel in Bodrum at 9.30am on Friday but did not get back to Manchester Airport until 4pm on the Sunday.
Mother and daughter, Carol and Lola Tomkinson, and their relative Alice Watt, from Cheshire, are now seeking compensation for the delays which, they say, ruined their holiday last month.
Thomas Cook Airlines said it wanted to ‘sincerely apologise’ to the customers for the long delay.
The operator said it was caused by an unexpected technical fault, after a diversion due to bad weather, which required repair overnight in Turkey.
"We provided welfare and hotel rooms overnight for our customers. We know how frustrating these delays are, and we’d like to thank our customers for their patience and understanding," said a spokesman.
"We’d also like to apologise further to those customers that were moved from their hotel during the day on the Saturday (October 25). We worked hard to ensure that they had suitable overnight accommodation for the evening of Saturday prior to their departure on the Sunday."
According to the Stoke Sentinel newspaper, the family paid £296 each for the week’s all-inclusive holiday at the Tuntas Beach Hotel in Altinkum, where they celebrated Carol’s birthday.
They were picked up from their hotel to be transferred to the airport at Bodrum at 9.30am on Friday October 24 and were warned about possible delays.
Their flight was cancelled later that day so they were trasnferred to a hotel at 5am on the Saturday and were told to be up again for 9am.
They were taken back to the airport but their flight was again cancelled, so they were forced to spend another night in a nearby hotel.
They were up again for a 9am transfer on the Sunday morning and finally landed in the UK at 4pm.
The family claimed Thomas Cook did not look after them properly during the delays and that the hotel they were taken to was ‘filthy’.
"It was disgusting. I kept crying my eyes out. Every time we asked for something the hotel staff either said ‘no’ or that they couldn’t speak English. You couldn’t get any help," Lola told the local newspaper.
Carol, 55, said she has been on holiday with Thomas Cook for 20 years and had ‘never had a bad experience’ like this one.
Bev
Editor in chief Bev Fearis has been a travel journalist for 25 years. She started her career at Travel Weekly, where she became deputy news editor, before joining Business Traveller as deputy editor and launching the magazine’s website. She has also written travel features, news and expert comment for the Guardian, Observer, Times, Telegraph, Boundless and other consumer titles and was named one of the top 50 UK travel journalists by the Press Gazette.
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