A family from Warwickshire, England was forced to sit on the floor during a flight home from vacation in Menorca (in Spain). While they were assigned seat numbers (41 D, E, and F), they arrived on the plane to find those seats just didn’t exist. Instead, there was just an empty row. During takeoff and landing, they were offered crew jump seats but were soon forced to sit on the floor when the crew needed to hand out food and sell duty-free items to the passengers lucky enough to get actual seats.
Paula and Ian Taylor, along with their daughter Brooke arrived at Mahon Airport in June 2018 for their flight with TUI Airlines, a German airline. They had paid £1300 ($1675) for the three tickets and only their daughter Brooke was able to sit for a portion of the flight, though she came back to sit with her parents for most of it.
Since their horrid flight, the family has spoken to a BBC television show, Rip Off Britain: Holidays about their experience.
“It’s hard and it’s uncomfortable and it’s just filthy, Mrs. Taylor told the BBC program. Only after Mrs. Taylor contacted TUI did the company offer them £30 ($39) as a goodwill gesture. TUI later offered the family a full refund of their flight cost.
Apparently, the lack of seats was due to a “last minute aircraft change,” which caused there to be fewer seats. The Civil Aviation Authority, the UK’s equivalent of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has been investigating the incident. The agency said that while there are certain situations in which customers can sit in crew seats, they may never sit on the floor.
Paula with her husband Ian and daughter Brooke || Photo courtesy of Paula Taylor
An episode featuring the family and their harrowing experience will be shown in the UK, but what do you think about this incident? Should the family have complained at all? Is sitting on the floor the new norm for airplane travel or was this a terrible injustice?
Mrs. Taylor said, “We just couldn’t believe it when we realized that there genuinely weren’t any seats for us.” Should the family just have gotten off the plane at that point?
Share your thoughts in the comments and tell us about your worst flying experiences.