A Midlands factory worker who worked extra shifts to pay for his family's dream holiday to Spain has spoken of his devastation at missing their flight due to 'confusion' at Birmingham Airport. Slawomir Adamczyk, 42, his partner Agnieszka and their children missed their Ryanair flight to Malaga along with dozens of others.
Sheet metal worker Slawomir and his partner were travelling to the holiday hotspot with their three children aged 15, 7 and 2. They arrived to Solihull-based BHX with ample time to make their flight, but due to large queues in security, chaos began to build as final calls rang through for a number of flights on Sunday March 31.
Currently, passengers can only access Birmingham Airport's security area through four lifts as work presses on to get their "state-of-the-art" £50m plus security hall upgrade built for its June deadline. As a result, bottlenecks build as passengers are forced to queue to even get up to the security area. The airport said they were "very sorry" to hear about Slawomir's experience.
READ MORE:TUI issues message to Birmingham Airport passengers as bosses say 'increase in demand'
Get breaking news on BirminghamLive WhatsApp
Slawomir said his family and others weren't treated with respect and that travellers were treated like 'cattle'. He was escorted out with others to collect their bags after long delays in security meant they all missed the flight, and he lost a total of £2,250.
The Burton-on-Trent resident told BirminghamLive: "We have been saving up all our money everyone was looking forward to it and I was doing weekend shifts.
"I have been doing all the weekends to save up for this holiday, and I feel someone took all this money off me." The sheet metal worker said he has contacted Ryanair, who were unable to help, and Birmingham Airport, who told us they have been in touch with him.
But Slawomir added that it is the moral issue of how passengers were treated on that day, he said his whole family was devastated at missing out on their holiday. "My daughter was in tears and she had a few situations at school and I had thought this will do her really good and her mental health good.
"My little son was crying for an hour in the queue, I have never faced anything like it. There was a lot of people around very annoyed and wound up. Five to six flights had a final call, if you imagine five to six flights were going through it was kind of a bottle neck. No one was moving forward.
"People later on were suffering because they didn't get enough people through security." The dad said they were offered different flights for three days later at an extra cost of £100 per person, which they turned down as it would have meant flying out on Wednesday and returning on Friday.
Slawomir lost £1,500 on flights, £750 on the hotel and had to cancel a £150 car hire, which he managed to avoid paying. What would he like after the let-down? "The financial return and the respect" said Slawomir.
"Treat people properly not like cattle. Some kind of respect not having situations like that again. On that day it happened to many more people."
BirminghamLive put Slawomir's concerns to Ryanair and Birmingham Airport. A BHX spokesperson responded: “We are very sorry to hear about Slawomir and his family’s experience at Birmingham Airport.
"We can confirm that his complaint is now with our Complaints Resolution Team, who are investigating further to identify the failing on the day. We have also reached out to Slawomir for further details.”
A Ryanair spokesperson commented: “Due to airport security delays at Birmingham Airport, Ryanair passengers were advised via email (30 Mar) to arrive at least 3 hours before their scheduled departure time.
"We regret that these airport security delays at Birmingham Airport, which are entirely out of our control, caused passengers to miss this flight from Birmingham to Malaga (31 Mar).”
For more stories from across Solihull including BHX, breaking news, politics and what's on, sign up to our MySolihull newsletter
