Stansted Airport nightmare

[momon121]

Hi

 

I am a mother of three children and we booked a flight to visit Morocco on the 28th July 2016 to see my elderly mother who just had a heart operation.

 

This was our first ever visit to Stansted, normally we fly from Manchester but this year the ticket prices were so expensive. We arrived at the airport and checked in time. As we went into the departure lounge a train carrying passengers to their Gate pulled in front. So we went on to the train thinking that it would be take us to our correct gate. As the train made it stops at the different Gate it became apparent that the train will not take us to our gate.

 

We found this later whilst being on the train as the speaker announced which destination is for each Gate. We got off the train and immediately informed one of the security personnel over the phone and they advised us that we remain in our position and somebody will come and collect us.

 

It took them twenty minutes before any help was received. By then we were so tired we travelled the night before setting off from Burnley at 23.00 to arrive in London Stansted before 04:00. The security personnel that came along was not very helpful, all he did was that he give us a set of direction which we could not digest wholly at the time and went away. We started panicking and started running with my three children to get to our gates. It was so undignifying and humiliating as we ran around the airport asking people for help.

 

Along the way we met a very kind security personnel who walk us to our Gate only to find that our Gate was closed. Learning that our gate was closed I broke down in tears and my kids also could not hold their tears. All three of them hugged me and cried with me. I felt so saddened in my heart that my kids holiday had been ruined. By then they were so tired and hungry, they've been awake since early hours of Thursday morning.

 

We were then advised to go another zone to collect our luggages. The personnel who was working at the time was so rude and horrible. He was not helpful at all, we asked were to collect our luggages and he misadviced and we had to wait nearly two hours for our luggage. It appeared that he was annoyed by me asking for his help and spoke back to me abruptly and instructed me harshly that I go and sit down.

 

Later I contacted another personnel and she made few phone calls to trace the whereabouts of my luggages and it went missing then it was later found. No apologies no sympathy were ever shown towards me or my children. There were no point of help, we suffered from dehydration. We could not not use the vending machines as it swallowed the money that my daughter inserted into the machine.

 

We were 225 miles away stranded without any support or help. Whilst waiting for my luggages my husband was worried and concerned as to what happened, so I passed the phone to my the gentleman who was rude to me so he could explain. I could not speak very well because I was in a state of shock and could not believe what just happened .

 

So my husband spoke to the personnel and he seemed extremely annoyed as to why he had to repeat the whole information back to my husband. My husband the shy man that he is remained silent and turned around and came back to the airport.

 

I have travelled many times to Morocco from Manchester, never did I miss my flights. It is not the case that we cannot read or speak English, we are very fluent. in English. There were lack of signs and information in the departure lounge in the airport. The time between getting off the train and not waiting 20 minutes we could have easily walked to our correct Gate. When we arrived home could we just crashed into our bed with blisters on our feet, my son who is only 5 felt so exhausted was in the bed for nearly two days.

 

As we write to you for help and advice my kids are seeing tears streaming down and my eldest girl who is only 9 is comforting me by hugging me. I feel I have been mistreated unfairly, at worse shown extreme rudeness by selfish personnels and £1440 ticket has been wasted.

 

Please can you advice what i can do?

 

Thanks

[unclebulgaria67]

So you arrived at Stansted departures at 4am, checked in, put your bags through, went through security and then had problems getting to the correct gate ?

 

How much time did you have to get to the gate, after going through security ? The gates normally close at least 20 minutes before a flight is due to take off.

 

I don't know Stansted, but with most airports there are so many signs telling you directions to gates. And normally there are loads of passengers on the same flights so you follow the crowd.

 

I think you can only write a letter to company that runs Stansted, advising them of the service issues that caused you to miss the flight. But you must give them times, so they can see that it was their service that was the problem and not that you were very slow or too busy doing other things like eating, shopping to get the gate. The airline might not have any responsibility, as it appears you did not ask for their help between security and the gate.

[momon121]

We appreciate that this has nothing to do with Ryanair. The train dropped us off 20 minutes before the gates closed. The gates closed at 05:40 according to our boarding pass and the flight was 06:10. We know that sometimes they give you 5 or 10 minutes leeway before the gates are closed. There were also delays in dropping our baggages as the the belt stopped moving causing ten minutes delay. Also when scanning our barcodes on our ticket was also delayed because one of the tickets would not scan . Despite all the delays we did manage to clear security in time but cannot recall there being much signs.

 

As for asking for help between security and gate, truly there were no personnels in sight?

[unclebulgaria67]

You need to roughly account for your time, between arriving at departures at 4am and then not getting to the gate until 5.50am, when Ryanair had closed the gate 10 minutes earlier.

 

Write down a rough timeline of what you did.

 

4am joined queue at Ryanair departures desk

4.10 checked in by Ryanair staff

4.20 joined queue at security

5.00 went through security

 

You might not remember exactly, but you must account for your time. Stansted airport will know from Ryanair how many other passengers were offloaded from that flight because they missed the gate closing time. If they find that it was only your family that had this problem, they need an explanation about the issues you personally faced as other passengers who checked in at the same time did not have any issues.

 

Unless you write a clear explanation that someone can understand and be able to check, you will find it difficult pursuing. This is why i suggest a rough timeline of what happened, so it is easy to follow.