A WOMAN seven months pregnant was left stranded in Lanzarote for over 17 hours after TUI allegedly told her there was no space left on her flight home.
Ceri Burns waited through six hours of delays waiting on her flight home to Birmingham, East Midlands, on Sunday before she was denied boarding.
Ceri, 37, and partner Chris Goulding were allegedly told by the holiday agents that “those who needed assistance and those with children” had priority boarding.
However, Chris, 38 claims that TUI kept himself and Ceri inside a pen by the gate, where he and other travelers weren’t allowed to board the flight.
Having spent the night in a hotel, the couple finally boarded a Ryanair flight home the following afternoon, more than 17 hours after their original flight departure time.
However, having finally touched back down in Birmingham, the pair were met with another blow when TUI revealed they had lost track of their luggage.
Still without their suitcases, Chris and Ceri have still not received a refund from TUI.
Speaking today Chris said: “I went for a week in Lanzarote with my partner Ceri for our babymoon.
“TUI told us that we were flying home but then we kept getting delayed, by 2:10am I had gotten a text to say the reason for this was an unwell passenger in Birmingham.
“This meant that the crew had used up their maximum legally permitted flying hours.
“We were put in a pen and as Ceri is pregnant I told her to sit down as we all had seats booked.
“It became clear when passengers started arguing that something was not right.
“They were scanning boarding passes and holding people in the room on the right of the gate if their bags had been removed due to there not being enough space on the flight.
“They randomly selected who wasn’t flying.
“When the commotion started they stopped scanning boarding passes to deal with people and then told us the plane had already gone before we had our passes scanned.
“We were delayed 3 hours coming here which made us miss our first evening as well.
“There has been no refund from TUI, it is ridiculously hard to get hold of someone and they are saying they cannot find our flight.
“We’ve not received any contact for the next steps from TUI and are struggling to actually speak to someone.”
