Edinburgh family endure "hellhole" Magaluf hotel after BA cancels flight home after dream cruise

An Edinburgh family has spoken about how they had to endure a night in a “hellhole” hotel in Majorca’s party resort of Magaluf after their flight home was cancelled at the last minute by British Airways following a “dream” Mediterranean cruise.

Colin McDougall, 43, and his fiancée Christina MacDonald, 40, went on the seven day cruise with Colin’s mum and dad Carol and Ian, and Colin’s brother Steven and his wife Tracy. The family were due to fly home from Palma in Majorca last Saturday, July 29.

However, after arriving at the airport on Saturday evening the family, originally from Gorgie, discovered that BA had cancelled their flight. After then spending a night in a “party central” hotel, the family expressed their anger with tour operator TUI and BA for a lack of communication, with around “50 or 60” Edinburgh passengers not getting home until 10.30pm on Sunday, July 30.

Colin told the Evening News: “As it was a chartered flight TUI kind of washed their hands of it. It became BA’s problem not theirs. But BA pointed us towards TUI. We’d heard on the bus to the airport just before 5pm from another passenger that the flight might have been cancelled, but nobody told us officially. There was nobody to greet us at check-in and we sat for an hour and a half with no communication at all.

"A lady eventually came and took our names, there must have been about 50 or 60 of us. We were then shifted along to the next desk and given a voucher for a hotel and sent on our way. But they still didn’t tell us when to come back for our flight.”

The family arrived at the three star BH Mallorca Hotel in Magaluf at around 7.30pm. Christina said: “We googled the hotel on the way there and it looked alright. The reality was somewhat different. It was a bit of a shock coming off a luxury TUI cruise. And they told us there was no food available.

"It’s a hotel for the young team, so there was music blasting out of the rooms and the smell of weed everywhere. There was an 82-year-old woman travelling alone who was sent to the hotel with us, it wasn’t the right place for her, or even us really. One group took one look at the hotel and decided to return to the airport.

"We had considered doing that too, and when Colin’s mum found a cockroach in her bed we decided to go back to the airport first thing in the morning. We never slept at all due to the noise, it was too loud.

"The rooms weren’t safe either. The floor tiles were broken, most of the furniture was broken, things were burnt, there was graffiti, it was just a hellhole. At this point we still hadn’t had any communication from TUI or BA, not even an email to say when to come back to the airport.”

The family fled the hotel at 7am on Sunday, paying for their taxi back to Palma Airport, still unaware what time their flight home was scheduled to leave.

Christina spoke of a day of waiting at the airport, with the growing crowd of Edinburgh-bound passengers becoming more restless as the day progressed without information.

She said: “We went to the TUI desk and they said it wasn’t their flight but they thought it was going at 3pm. We were told to speak to the Iberia desk, who didn’t really know what time the flight was. From that point on nobody spoke to us. All the Edinburgh passengers congregated together but nobody from the airlines or TUI spoke to us.

"Later on, at about 12pm the folk from TUI sensed the growing disquiet and came and spoke to us but nobody from Iberia came out, they actually said they didn’t want to speak to us. That’s shocking, as there is no duty of care there at all. One lady said she had to get home as she was on medication and had none left.

"We started to look at other potential flights home as we didn’t know what to do because they left us completely in limbo. The TUI rep went back and forth and then at 1pm they told us to check-in for a 6pm flight, but it was all still a bit vague.

"We were each then given vouchers worth seven Euros each, but we found that most of the airport shops didn’t accept them. So we ended up having to pay for food and drink anyway. Once we got through security we never heard from anybody again.”

The Edinburgh flight eventually boarded at 7.30pm, much to the pleasure of the passengers waiting to get home.

Colin added: “Everybody was celebrating when we got the call to board. People were cheering and clapping. We had become a wee gang, helping each other out, trying to find out any information we could and passing it onto each other.”

The flight eventually left at 8.50pm, with passengers hit with one final blow when it was announced that no food or alcoholic drinks would be served on the flight, before touching down in Edinburgh at around 10.30pm.

Reflecting on the nightmare end to their holiday, Colin said: “These things happen, flights get cancelled, but there was no communication really. And in our group my mum and dad are pensioners, yet they sent us to basically an ‘18-30’ dive of a hotel in Magaluf.

"We are in the process of claiming compensation but we don’t know yet what we will get. I’m also a bit miffed with TUI, we have not even had a courtesy email from them. And, you would think BA is a respectable company and they would do more than what they did. There was just no communication from them.

"It wasn’t a nice experience. None of us were expecting a five star hotel but maybe somewhere that was clean and not a dive. The cruise itself was brilliant, our cabins were spotless and the food was great. It was just that last little bit of our holiday that was horrendous.”

The couple added that they believe this is the third cancellation of flights connecting to the TUI Mediterranean cruise in the past couple of weeks.

A British Airways spokesperson said: “We’re sorry for the overnight delay to our customers’ flight due to crew sickness. Our teams in Palma organised overnight accommodation and a replacement crew operated the flight the following day.”

TUI has been contacted for comment.