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Angry family's £500 taxi fare after Wizz Air dumps them 200 miles from home in Doncaster

An angry family were forced to fork out £500 on a taxi after being dumped in Doncaster in the middle of the night by budget airline Wizz Air.

Dozens of passengers were left stranded 200 miles from their destination and told to find their own way home after a flight was diverted to Doncaster Sheffield Airport earlier this week.

Now one upset family have revealed how they were forced to fork out the bumper fee after Monday’s flight fiasco.

Hilla Lousky, her husband and their two children were supposed to land from Tel Aviv, Israel, into London's Gatwick Airport on Monday morning but were rerouted to Doncaster.

The flight was already running three hours behind schedule by the time it got into the air when passengers were told about the diversion.

They were told coaches would be waiting to take them south, but there were non organised with Hilla her husband and children, 10-year-old daughter Zohar and her baby boy Yahel, among those caught up in the chaos.

Hilla told The Mirror: "Yahel was crying and was extremely tired"

"I prepared some food before the flight, snacks and milk, but when babies are too tired, they can't really eat properly."

A spokesperson for Wizz Air said customers will be reimbursed for any transportation costs.

“Wizz Air sincerely apologises for the inconvenience and disruption that was caused by the rerouting of its flight W9 5752 from Tel Aviv to London Gatwick on Easter Monday.

"Due to Air Traffic Control staff shortages at London Gatwick, it was unfortunately not possible for the flight to land at the airport as planned, and instead it had to divert to Doncaster Sheffield.

"Owing to lack of available bus and train transfers at short notice, we were unable to source transportation as quickly as we would have liked.

"We seek to deliver great customer experiences, and recognise that we fell short on this occasion.

"All affected customers will be reimbursed for any transportation costs incurred.”

Angry passengers say they arrived into Doncaster at 3am with some passengers unaware of how far away they were from London or how to get home.

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IDFIMH

Someone is telling porkies.

Nothing to do with the number of air traffic staff, and everything to do with the number of night flights allowed to land at Gatwick.

You have Luton, Stanstead, Heathrow, Southampton, Birmingham, Cardiff and Manchester all nearer than Doncaster. Did they all have a shortage of staff?

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IDFIMH

Interesting story.

It's what you get when you use a budget airline, unfortunately.

You get what you pay for.

What you say here might have validity.

British Airways have been using tricks with maximum weight allowances on their flights by sending customers luggage on a separate flight (top stay under the threshold) which not only gets to them a day or two after their flight arrival but also on many occasions some customers luggage gets lost in transit etc.

If you are correct in your assumptions then it might be possible that Whizz Air are not licensed or do not have a terminal with any of the the airports you mention and therefore Doncaster was the nearest airport they operate at from London.

They are a budget airline after all.

more likely down to which airports that also have a whizz air base would accept a 0300 flight I'm surprised they didn't consider EMA as the alternate and Stansted has night flying but mostly cargo flights

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lack of modern legislation is the iceberg sinking the titanic of the transport sector