We were supposed to go to Tenerife on my birthday for my 40th birthday present. I’ve been so excited for months.
we got to airport super early with flight leaving yesterday evening. We went to the tunnel to board and after 40 minutes standing around wondering what was happening we were herded back into the airport like sheep.
I asked airline staff if I had time to go to the shop before the plane took off and was told “yes if you RUN!”
I asked airline staff when we would be taking off and begged a man to be honest, he promised me 20 minutes.
Staff in shops refused to serve us wine suspecting we would take it on board, in the end I got frustrated in duty free saying it was my birthday, I’m terrified of flying and was supposed to take off over an hour ago. She let me have the wine, we took it back to waiting area at the gate to covertly drink it.
No staff were there to be bothered but other passengers however eyed it like it was liquid gold and I felt guilty for not taking orders from the shop! No one wanted to risk missing the flight in case they went to the shop… if only we’d known.
Three hours later the wine drunk, no one knows what going on (staff or passengers) we get an email from TUI saying flight is cancelled. We get put up in different hotels, luckily we got the holiday inn so still technically not left airport but some poor people get farmed out after waiting another few hours for transport.
We had a nice meal and get told flight leaving at 9am the next day. Too scared to sleep in case anything changes so go back to airport after breakfast. The people from other hotels get picked up at 5am, we at least get to go later as close to airport, good job because flight gets changed to 10am.
Get to the airport at 8 and PROMISED flight will be leaving at 10, 9am comes and we get given £20 each to spend in the airport - but nowhere accepts it except WH Smith - and only on snacks and drinks. £40 seemed like a lot but gets you surprisingly little!
We have become a family of exhausted people identifiable by walking round with bags of crisps and sweets, every time an announcement comes over the tannoy we freeze in hope… it’s never our flight.
The latest text from tui says Our apologies for the delay to your flight. Your new departure time will be . In order to operate your flight today we have had to source a new aircraft. Unfortunately this has caused an additional delay.
So yet again we didn’t even get a time! And I’m wondering if they are building the aircraft from scratch.
The flight isn’t showing as existing on any flight tracker apps and I’m convinced that we are just being gaslighted and there isn’t actually a plane for us.
AIBU for thinking that I’m destined to remain in the airport forever