We returned home yesterday after a fantastic four week holiday in Calis.
The only downside were the journeys to and from Dalaman. [^][
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We have flown with Onur Air many times with no real problems, other than slight changes to departure times so were more than happy to book with them again this year.
This year, we chose to fly out of Gatwick (much cheaper than out of Bristol or Cardiff, our "local" airports) on 1st August. We travelled up to London by train (hubby's a train driver, so we have free rail travel). The first hurdle was when we arrived for the Gatwick Express to find there had been a flood on the line from a burst pipe and the line had been closed for over 4 hours!
We had some time to spare, so had a quick re-think and piled our luggage and teenagers back into a taxi, thinking that we could have a change of direction if we went back to Victoria. As we slammed the door shut, the staff shouted that the line had just re-opened!
It was chaos as there was a huge backlog of passengers, though many had given up and had left, or were sitting around crying due to missed flights. (We had been told that there was also a huge hold up on the road on the way to Gatwick, so no chance of getting there with a direct taxi.) We finally managed to get on the train and arrived at Gatwick with only an hour to spare before our flight actually left! (So glad I didn't book the VIP lounge for the four of us as I originally planned - we had no time to go in there, as we went straight through check-in!)
We finally arrived at our apartment at 5am on the 2nd to find we had a massive problem with cockroaches (will post elsewhere about this!
)
Our problems continued as we then found out a day or so later that Aegean had gone bust, and we needed to contact the CAA to arrange a new flight home. As we had friends flying out (luckily with Thomas Cook) to stay with us for the last week of our holidays, we decided to hold back on the call, in case they were sending passengers home early. We really didn't want to go home before the 29th, though we had a day or so after this to play with before we had to return to work.
I finally made contact a few days before the end of our holiday and we were given a flight home on Monday evening leaving Dalaman at 23.10 hrs. We were pleased with this as our original flight would have been earlier that day anyway.
However, the flight went via Bodrum to pick up more passengers, and landed at Manchester, with onward coach transfer to Gatwick!!!! We asked at Dalaman if we could bail out at Manchester and get on one of the other coaches to Cardiff, Bristol or Birmingham and we were told that this would be fine.
The flight left Bodrum around 1am Turkish time, with a lot of very tired babies and children on board. (I have four kids so know how difficult it is with tired children. However, allowing your child to watch cartoons on a personal dvd player at full volume with no headphones at 2am is taking the mick for other passengers! The staff asked the parents many times to turn it down, but to no avail. The child eventually fell asleep after about an hour and a half!
)
On arrival at Manchester around 3.30am British time, it was bedlam - no one there to tell us where we had to go or what we had to do. We waited for the coaches to come in but our three choices all had minibuses rather than coaches and were full.
We therefore chose to make our own way home, rather than go all the way to Gatwick and then have to get the train back to Wales. (We had originally booked a Travelodge in Gatwick for the night of the 29th as we were due to land around 9pm. As we didn't leave Dalaman until after 11pm, we lost this booking, and are unable to claim the money back for the room plus meals previously booked, as it was too short notice.)
To get home to South Wales, we had to get three trains and a bus, a total travel time from Dalaman of around 15 hours!
:(:
I now have the arduous job of claiming back for next year's flights. Any ideas of where I even start? They are booked on our credit card, so I guess I have to start with Barclaycard? Thanks for any advice.
Apologies if this has been covered on here already (I'm sure it has!) Unfortunately, I haven't had enough time to go through all my missed posts yet!
Roll on our next visit to Turkey - 7 weeks time, booked through Easy Jet!
Just as an after thought - all you cbf'ers - keep an eye on which airline I book through! I have lost flights through KTHY, Goldtrail and now Onur Air in the last year or so! Maybe I'm a jinx on airlines ....... :P 
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