A British taxi driver is furious he’s been stranded in Thailand after his tour operator cancelled his flight home.
Paul Henstock, from the Midlands, revealed he is supposed to be on his dream holiday after a tragedy almost left him permanently disabled.
The 54 year old said he’d saved hard for the 10 weeks’ trip after an accident in the Philippines left him in hospital for nearly four months.
But now the dream vacation has turned into a nightmare for the Nottinghamshire man after he was told his flight home was cancelled via a text message from the online travel agency lastminute.com.
The taxi driver from Mapperley Park flew from Gatwick Airport, London, to Thailand on July 5 and was due to return home on September 11 on a Singaporean airline, Scoot. He spent £525 (22,200 baht) on the tickets on lastminute.com.
“I booked a ten-week holiday to travel Thailand. I should fly home on Sunday, September 11, which is just in a few days. But on Wednesday morning I woke up to a text from lastminute.com saying that my flight was cancelled.
“I kept buying SIM cards. It took an hour. And then it took 42 minutes to ring in Singapore.
I was basically offered the money back which was about £480 or a travel voucher and again.
It would not put me on another flight.
They could not do it.
“The cheapest direct flight on that date is £1285.
I was angry because I can afford to sort it out, but there were also families on that flight.
“On September 18 my visa expires so I have got to be out of Thailand. The only way I managed to do it and get it at a decent price is to fly back on the 18th, the day my visa expires.
“I have got to fly to Finland to get back to the UK. It still cost me just under £800, so £480 does not even cover this flight.”
Henstock made known he worked and saved hard for years to have his dream holiday. It was his reward for teaching himself to walk again after he ended up in a Manila hospital for 14 weeks in 2018.
“This was my dream to get back on a surfboard which I did achieve, silver clouds at the end of a rainbow and all that. I saved my money hard and this was my big thing and they just dropped it right on me.”
Lastminute.com and Scoot airline were not available for comment.
SOURCE: Nottingham Post
