Holiday Disasters

Some holidays are so bad they end up in court. If you want to read about those unfortunate travellers see our section on Travellers' Trials.

This section is devoted to those equally unfortunate travellers who didn’t end up in court but who simply wish to share their travel disasters with others.

Some names and dates have been changed to protect the innocent (and the guilty) but all stories comply with Murphy’s Laws of Travel – if a journey can go wrong it will.

Learning about other people’s travel disasters sometimes engenders a feeling of schadenfreude – taking delight in the misfortune of others. Should a similar disaster happen to you then you might want to visit look more closely at Your Travel Rights on this site 

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My sister and I were joining a 14 night transatlantic cruise from Barcelona to Fort Lauderdale by flying into Barcelona’s El Prat Airport and picking up the ship at the harbour in Barcelona. Just after take-off passengers were informed that none of our luggage had been loaded on the plane and that on arrival we were to go to the airline’s ground handlers and make out a report.

Fortunately we were sitting near the front of the plane and we were young and fit so on entering the luggage claim area we ran as fast as we could and were just about first in line to give the ground handlers our details. With over 200 people on the plane it would have been several hours before those last in line were dealt with.

This was Saturday evening, the ship left at 4pm the next day. Would we get our luggage before then? That was unlikely but we provided details of our hotel in Barcelona. But if it didn’t arrive there where would it catch up with us? Cartagena? Malaga? Cadiz? Tenerife? Or 14 days later at Fort Lauderdale?

In the meantime all we had to stand up in were the clothes we travelled in plus a few essentials in a carry on bag. We had passports, credit cards, some toiletries and a spare pair of knickers but that was about it. Guidebooks, tablets and phones are not much use when it comes to clothing. We had no casual clothes for loafing around the ship during the day; no bikinis for sun bathing; no evening dresses for formal nights; not even any night clothes – although the airline did provide us with a baggy T-shirt.