Jul 21 2008 By Tim Lewis
AN AIRPORT mix-up lead to a family boarding the wrong plane and taking a 12-hour round trip to Turkey.
The couple and daughter, from Llanishen in Cardiff, were supposed to be spending seven days in Lanzarote this week.
But at the Thomson check-in desk at Cardiff Airport they were given the wrong boarding passes and sent to the wrong departure gate.
They boarded a flight – thinking they were going to the Spanish island – but soon found themselves in Bodrum Airport, Turkey.
Charlie Coray, 47, said: “We checked our suitcases in and were handed back some boarding cards and told which gate to go to.
“At 5am on a Sunday morning all you do is make sure your boarding passes are safe in your pocket and you are going to the correct gate.
“We just presumed we had been given the right boarding passes and told the right gate, just like anyone else would.”
Mr Coray said there was nothing to indicate where the flight was heading and the family immediately all fell asleep when on board.
The first they knew of the problem was when they woke up as the plane was landing.
He added: “Everyone just started to panic. The stewards were all running around trying to work out what had gone wrong.
“From then on we were just totally shell-shocked.
“It was chaos. Our daughter was getting upset and we were trying to find people in the airport who spoke english to explain what happened.”
The Corays had to get the same plane back to Cardiff and last night stayed in a hotel while the company involved tries to arrange an alternative.
A spokesman for Servisair, the company who dealt with the check-in and gate boarding for Thomson, said: “We apologise profusely for the error and we are doing everything we can to try and get the family to where they want to be.
“Slip ups at the check in desk such as this are a very rare occurrence and we do not want this sort of thing to happen again.”
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