Well, this week can F.off.

[Simon]

I (we) should be in Spain right now.

We've had a challenging year one way or another, so when we went to book a holiday at the start of the summer holidays to find that both my wife and son's passport were on the cusp of expiring we were pretty dispirited. Renewing Noah's was easy, as a normal British passport. But my wife is still on her Brazilian passport, and it's difficult enough to get that renewed here in the UK, what dealing with the consulate in Edinburgh, AND it's an election year in Brazil which makes the whole thing even more complicated. Nevertheless, a couple of weeks ago we finally got her new passport in the post and we were able to look around for places to go.

We finally settled on a Eurocamp just outside of Barcelona as it's something different and the kids love a water park. They've both flown before, with my eldest having done Portugal a couple of times, as well as Lanzarote last year and even Brazil a few years ago so he's no stranger to flights. We've finally managed to get my son into a private special needs school after a big fight with the council, and as we only just got the approval a few weeks ago for them to fund it it's delayed his start date this term by a week, so we thought this was the perfect time to get away.

As I say although he's flown a few times before, he's now 6 and a little more 'aware' of what's going on, so we used AI to storyboard the whole trip for him so he knew what to expect. Nevertheless, for the first time on a flight we didn't use a jet-bridge to board the plane, but rather a bus to the apron. As soon as we got off the bus it was loud and a bit breezy and he told us straight away that he was scared. We calmed him, got him up onto the plane and into the seat and settled him down. However, when the second bus load of passengers arrived and the plane started to fill up he suddenly got triggered and wanted to get off the plane. Thing is, when he gets an idea in his mind then nothing is changing it. We got him back outside onto the steps, and despite the best efforts of the cabin crew and even the pilot to talk to him we couldn't calm him down. The crew said that we couldn't really take off by dragging him back into the plane and to be honest, I had no energy to battle him like that, so we de-planed.

Got our own bus back to the terminal, dealt with a lovely Easyjet manager in there, then had to wait for them to get our luggage off the plane and bring us back through the 'special/secret' doors from departures back into immigration.

Got home and discovered that our cat, who's been a bit sickly of late (but we thought it was just furballs), had waited till we'd gone and been sick both upstairs and down, but now was actually throwing up a lot of blood too. Lovely. Emergency trip to the vets to get her settled and now she's booked in for an exploratory op on Monday.

The holiday had felt fated from first discovering the expiring passports, but I said to my wife before we left the airport that it felt like this holiday wasn't meant to be and that destiny was trying to stop us going. My brother only lives around the corner and was going to pop in and feed Maya, but there's no way we could've dealt with the vet stuff from Spain, so... well done Noah I guess?

So if you were wondering why EZY8055 left Gatwick 50 minutes late on Wednesday, now you know.

Will feed back on the cat next week. Poor little mite.

[Gavin]

Bloody hell, that is tough on all of you. I hope you can get a refund of some of the holiday costs. Fingers crossed for the cat as well.

[mik]

That. Is rather crap.

Good luck sorting something.

[DeskJockey]

Sorry to hear that. What a palaver to deal with.

[Simon]

Thanks everyone.

Bloody hell, that is tough on all of you. I hope you can get a refund of some of the holiday costs.

Eurocamp gave me the bird, easyJet would rebook to a different day (but what with the cat, the impending term start and no refund on that accomodation that was pointless) and the car hire company blanked me.

So I turned to my travel insurance to see what they would do. The claim is still pending. Pretty unusual situation for them to deal with.

Oh, and a special F.U to the passenger who came to the front of the plane after we were just 3 minutes behind our scheduled departure time to stress about what was happening as he 'didn't want to miss his connection'. I was almost too gobsmacked to reply. If your connection is at risk from a 3 minute delay on a friggin plane then you deserve to miss it.

[jamcg]

I think we need to once again normalise people minding their own business and not making situations worse, and if you don’t then you should be legally obligated to tell them to fuck off cunt

Hope insurance isn’t a fuck on and hope the cats ok.

One plus side of the whole thing is you can now talk about the experience and know what to expect if you try again

[Simon]

It's weird because he loves planes and has flown on them many times. But this time he was scared, properly scared. I remember looking at my wife as she fought to control him and the look of dazed shock in her face. I simply said "it's not going to happen, we need to leave".

When they brought the steps back to the plane and finally opened the doors again my little boy said to the steward "please open the door" and when she did, through tear streaked face he cried 'thank you'. She looked at us and was 'awwww'. Polite always. Even in his hardest moments.

I think next time we'll drive somewhere.

Either that or fly private.





....
/Jk

[mik]

So if you were wondering why EZY8055 left Gatwick 50 minutes late on Wednesday.

Probably too soon, and JL wouldn’t get it, but…. Easy Boss.

[Simon]

[V8Granite]

I'm guessing the situation your lad is dealing with but the wife's best friend is similar. Went on a fairground ride once and decided to get off, had a bit of a meltdown at an airport but at check in. He does DJ sets now in front of big crowds.

It never sounded easy at all but you definitely did the right thing. Or in his mind he would build up the flight home and somehow fixate that you needed to take him home by moped

All funny pub stories in years to come and family comes first.

Good luck with the cat, animals are excellent at being dicks with bad timing.

Dave!