Storm over Lapland

AT last . . . Dave, Jannette and Sophie when they eventually made it to Lapland

Family’s nightmare flight

A distraught couple who took their daughter on a dream trip to Lapland are at the centre of a storm over their nightmare journey.

Businessman Dave Molyneux kept a diary of their £3,500 visit, which left the family grounded when they should have been saying hello to Santa.

Mr Molyneux (45), who lives in Dobcross, booked the three-night break with Canterbury Travel, for his wife Jannette and nine-year-old daughter, Sophie.

More than 70 other children were travelling with families on the flight shortly before Christmas, 2009.

Disgruntled Dave has now joined a forum of angry passengers demanding compensation from the tour operator and Thomas Cook, who were to fly them to their Finnish destination.

In a detailed catalogue, Dave says they spent nine hours on the Tarmac at Manchester Airport due to technical problems and bad weather. “We boarded the plane at breakfast time in bright blue skies after a heavy snow shower an hour earlier,” he said.

“The pilot told passengers we could not take off as we were waiting for a valve to de-ice. Ninety minutes later, the valve still had not defrosted and cabin staff served us our meal. “It the meantime, they removed some luggage from the cabin and the engineers looked at the problem.

“At 1pm the pilot said the valve had not been frozen at all.

“It was a faulty part — nothing to do with the weather. The fault was not even a safety issue. However, we were kept waiting another hour as the pilot said they had to get bottled water for us to be able to flush the toilets.

“During this time, we watched planes land and take off in between snow showers. We had missed slots but other aircraft were clearly flying.”

Dave, who runs a health food supplement business, said the pilot then told passengers his crew had run out of permitted hours to fly and there was no relief crew on stand-by. “We all had to disembark,” said Dave.

“This just added to our misery. We had to rebook our flight for the following day and find overnight accommodation — that cost another £100.

“There was no offer of a flight for the evening, no hot drink all day on board the plane, no food in the airport, no representative to offer advice and support to families that were clearly with distressed children. Where were their manners?

“When we eventually got to Lapland, we had a great time. But the travelling side of the trip was a nightmare,” he added.

A spokesman for Thomas Cook said: “We’d like to re-iterate our apology to those passengers on flight 253G to Lapland.

“We’re now working with Canterbury Travel to ensure that passengers are compensated.”