EasyJet customer has journey from hell when his Manchester flight is cancelled… with the bus driver even forgetting how to DRIVE
Simon Keens, 34, faced a frustrating trip after his easyJet flight from Manchester to Basel, Switzerland, was cancelled
AN international salesman trying to get home when his flight was cancelled has described his Fawlty Towers-esque journey - after his bus driver admitted that he had actually forgotten how to drive the bus.
Simon Keens, 34, faced a frustrating trip after his easyJet flight from Manchester to Basel, Switzerland, was cancelled, but little did he know that the cancellation would prove to be the least of his worries.
EasyJet rebooked flights from Luton to Basel for businessman Simon, along with his partner, Alyssa Varley, and two friends travelling with the couple, who live in Switzerland.
The airline also arranged for a bus to pick the group up, but Simon claims the driver only showed up after a three-hour delay, before admitting that he'd never driven the bus before.
The group then faced a painful journey across the country, which saw the driver borrow £120 for petrol after he tried, and failed, to pay using an invalid loyalty card.
And things went from bad to worse for the bus driver when he was forced to halt the journey long enough to call his boss - since he had forgotten how to put the vehicle into gear.
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The bizarre ordeal prompted Simon to complain to easyJet, and he wants €500 compensation from the flight firm to cover the annual leave he was forced to take.
Simon, originally from Oxfordshire, said: "I brought my partner and friends to Manchester to show them a city I love, but now the only thing everyone talks about is the nightmare we had on the way back.
"I would never travel with easyJet again unless I had no other option. EasyJet clearly don't have a plan in place when things go wrong, and when they do, they just want their angry customers to go away and become somebody else's problem.
"It started at 6pm when we were told our flight from Manchester to Basel had been cancelled. Nearly two hours later we were rebooked onto a flight from Luton the following morning and told the bus was leaving in 15 or 20 minutes.
"An hour later there were still no busses. The staff kept saying the bus would be here in 10 minutes but we were kept waiting. We lost all trust for anything they said. People were getting restless and babies were crying."
Four hours after they were told of the delay, busses eventually turned up to transport the disgruntled group, but the worst was far from over.
When the bus finally reached the M56, the driver confessed that it was his first week on the job - and that he'd never driven the bus before.
Simon said: "We had just got onto the motorway when the driver admitted he'd never driven the bus before. By that point a lot of us were exhausted. We left the airport at the same time the flight should have landed.
"Two hours into the journey the driver said he had to pull over and have a break, so we pulled over at a service station. We set off again half an hour later, but the driver had to call his boss as he'd forgotten how to put the bus into gear."
Soon after, the bus needed to be refuelled, but even that was an ordeal for the bus driver - who had no cash and only an invalid fuel card to pay with.
Simon said: "There was a stand-off between the night manager and the driver, and eventually a passenger gave £120 in cash to pay for the petrol. I'm not sure if she actually got that back."
After the driver got lost in Luton for half an hour, the bus finally pulled in to the hotel car park, meaning it was 3:20am by the time the passengers could check in.
But despite arriving at the hotel nine hours after the flight was cancelled, Simon doesn't hold a grudge against the driver.
He said: "I don't want to get the bus driver in any trouble because he was the person who cared the most. It was his first week on the job."
But Alyssa wasn't so relaxed about the whole affair. She said: "It was probably the worst travel experience I ever had - and I used to get the bus from New York China town with live chickens on the bus."