Oct 13, 2015 01:38 PM
15320 Views
Me( Mrs Basant Kharabanda) E-TICKET NUMBER: 1058933733303-304 and my Sister( Mrs Raj Varma) E- TICKET NUMBER 1056765036425/26 had a Return flight on 14th September 2015 from Toronto to Delhi via London and Helsinki on FinnAir with some sectors operated by British Airways.
It is to be noted that I am a 76 year old woman who recently underwent surgery for cancer and my chemotherapy sessions ended not even 6 months ago(April 2015). My elder sister is 79 years old and is a diabetes patient. Our tickets had special assistance request, implying that both of us needed wheelchairs, however, on deboarding the plane at Heathrow International Airport at 9:30 am on Tuesday, September 15, 2015, we were provided with only one due to lack of information. As our connecting time was only 2 hours, we did not want to waste time waiting for another wheel chair and so I decided to walk the terminal change.
This has just been the starting of the series of misfortunes that we had to go through at Heathrow International Airport. First, we had to wait till the airline staff bought a raised platform to assist us get down the stairs as we had cabin baggage and we requested that if someone could carry our baggage, we could climb the stairs down, but instead, they got a platform for us. After that one bus that leaves for the terminal had departed and we had to wait till the bus we were in got full, implying, even after flying business class, we had to wait for all passengers on economy to deboard. We kept mentioning to the staff assisting us that we will miss our connecting flight but it was of no use. There was a long line at the security and we were not given priority in the security line.
When we reached the boarding gate, we learnt that our checked in baggage has been loaded off and that we cannot board the plane as we were late. It is to be noted that the plane had not departed and yet they loaded off our check in luggage. I would believe that it is easier to let a person board rather than deboarding their luggage. Once we missed our flight to Helsinki, both Finnair and British Airways washed their hands off us and said that since we missed our flight because we were not cooperative, we have to find an alternative of our own.
FinnAir also mentioned that since we booked the flights on a discounted fare, we cannot get a next flight or any assistance and the only alternative on FinnAir was to leave on Thursday(17th September 2015) with an additional charge of 500 GBP each. We had no credit cards or working phone so we had to request the staff to call our family in India. The staff kept assuring our family that they will put us on the Air India flight that will depart from Heathrow Airport at 9.30 pm same night and that we have to pay an additional 780 GBP for both of us. They told our family that we can get the tickets booked at the counter and for payment, our family will provide the credit card details over the phone. This was told to us and our family multiple number of times and so our option was to wait till the Air India counter opened at 5:00 pm.
During this time, we had no assistance, no food and were left in an airport as busy as Heathrow to fend for ourselves on our own. On reaching the Air India counter, we were asked to wait till 8 pm and post that, they conveniently declined to accept credit card details over the phone and requested for a physical card or book the tickets online. It I snot possible to book a ticket online just 90 minutes before its departure and thus, we were helpless and frantic again. The next earliest alternative we got and we booked was British airways that left the next day at 10:15 am. Our family booked the tickets online. What added to the misery was the fact that we were not cooperated with or taken care of. We are two elderly ladies but no sympathy was shown. We had to spend the night at a lounge and we were kept asking to move between terminals as some place or the other kept shutting down.
