Instead of returning to Manchester Airport from Mexico, the Tui flight landed in remote northern Canada
A British family hoping to return home to Manchester instead found themselves stranded in Canada, after their Tui flight was grounded because of an unruly passenger.
The family were flying home from an all-inclusive holiday in Cancun when a man’s behaviour became “aggressive and alarming” aboard their TUI flight to Manchester Airport.
Their dad, Mr Stockford, said the man was sat directly behind his daughters and made several attempts to exit the plane mid-flight.
He then made ‘disturbing’ comments about a “man with a knife” that frightened other passengers, many of them being children.
Mr Stockford claims that staff managed to subdue the man with the help of a doctor.
However, as the plane approached the Pacific Ocean, he was deemed too much of a flight risk and the pilot decided to divert the plane to Canada where he could be removed by police.
According to Mr Stockford, the troublesome passenger’s wife later attributed his behaviour to diazepam he bought from a taxi driver in Mexico.
The Boeing 787-9 landed in Gander in the early hours of Friday morning – a small town in the north-eastern part of the island of Newfoundland, Canada, reports the M.E.N..
Speaking about the chaos on the plane, he said: “The plane landed quite firm, he tried to get up, TUI staff shouted ‘sit back down, now!’ and kids behind us were crying, thinking they were gonna’ die,”
“They were saying, ‘why do I feel like I’m dying, mummy? It was horrible.”
He added that as he and close to 400 passengers disembarked, the pilot said they would be “looked after”.
However, once off the plane, passengers claim they encountered several issues and very little communication from TUI.
“We entered a country at 3C having been in a 32C country. We had shorts on, t-shirts, babies weren’t wrapped up because of that,” he recalled.
They claimed the issues included slow transport to the hotels booked by TUI and, when the family arrived, they say they were told their room was only available for less than four hours.
The M.E.N. understands that hotels in the town were booked due to a large event taking place in the town.
“On the plane the captain they were gonna’ look after us and said they were going to provide us with transport to a hotel, a free hotel, food and drink.” he said.
“At that point we were thinking, ‘we’re not going to go home today, but at least we’ve got a hotel to rest in.’
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“We queued up for this transfer, the transfer was a 12-seater crooked old school bus. As you can imagine, 360 passengers, it was going to take time. The hotels were three or four across Gander.
“We tried to ring a taxi because we had young children. There was only three taxi companies in Gander, it’s a population of 12,000.
“The taxi came, and they couldn’t take us because they had no car seat and it was illegal to drive a baby without a car seat.
“We eventually got on the bus. We got to the hotel three hours later, everyone was tired, and the hotel staff told us we’ve only got the hotel for four hours.”
After returning to the airport on Friday, they were told that it would take another 14 hours before they could take off for home.
This meant that most of the passengers had to sleep on the floor of the Gander Airport, where they were left with very little food, drink, and clothing due to a majority of their luggage staying on the plane.
The dad of four, from Manchester, told the M.E.N. that news of their diversion had spread to the locals, who stepped in and helped Brits travel around the town to shop for essentials.
The incident is not the first to happen in the town of Gander, which has become known for supporting stranded travellers over the years – including on 9/11, a moment which became the focus of hit musical Come From Away.
He said: “Loads of locals flooded in and helped everyone get back to the airport,
“We’ve got a lift back to the airport for free, which was lovely. Then we had to spend 14 hours with the rest of the 360 passengers on the floors of the airport.
“Children sleeping on the floors, families on the floors because there was not enough seats.
The flight was due to land at the Manchester Airport around 7:15am on Friday (June 5). However, the family didn’t get home until Saturday (June 6).
“14 hours on the airport floor, cold floors, hard floor, babies, young kids, families. Just not taken into consideration,” he said.
“We got given some vouchers, but I got a photo of the airport fridges, there was hardly anything left.”
A business owner, Mr Stockford says the incident has left his children traumatised and resulted in a loss of earnings for both he and his wife.
“My daughters are nervous now to fly again because of the situation,” he said. “TUI from the start of being diverted to the end, just completely failed us.”
TUI has been approached for comment.
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