By Graham Brown

BRITISH AIRWAYS has come under fire from a disabled family whose dream trip Down Under turned into a “nightmare”.

The under-pressure airline—smarting from this week’s disastrous opening of Heathrow’s flagship Terminal 5 building—wrecked two electric scooters belonging to an Angus woman and her ill mother-in-law and reportedly threw a Jumbo flight into panic when a technical glitch saw the aircraft’s oxygen masks drop from overhead racks into the faces of worried passengers.

BA bosses have immediately sanctioned the replacement of the damaged disabled buggies but traveller George Grindlay remains locked in a bitter battle with the airline which he said yesterday had ruined an Australian family reunion and plunged his mother into even more serious ill-health.

Mr Grindlay, who lives near Forfar, said he, wife Catherine and mother Frances had endured a catalogue of misery since taking off on the month-long trip in February.

“My mother has two sisters out there and because she is 76 and in ill-health this was going to be the last time she was going out to see them,” he said.

“She was in hospital only the week before but was given the all-clear to fly,” said George, adding that arrangements had been made with the airline for oxygen to be available for his mother and for the electric buggies to be taken overseas.

“We’ve travelled many times before and have never had any problems. Normally they are taken down and transported as one item, but this time they were taken down into 10 individual parts, which was something that has never happened before.”

He said the disabled scooters failed to arrive with them in Sydney, but when they did they were badly damaged, leaving him with no option but to hire equipment there.

“It is very difficult to hire disabled scooters there and that’s why we had made arrangements to take our own. Some of our bags didn’t arrive for five days and I spent almost A$1800 (£860) in Australia for hires and getting things sorted out.”

He said the holiday horror continued on the return journey when a malfunction in the oxygen changeover from a tank to the main system in their plane resulted in a decompression warning within the cabin.

“All the masks dropped down and we had the ‘plastic jungle’ in our faces for hours until we reached Bangkok.

“This was a multi-million pound jet with 400 people on board and I believe they tried to fix the problem with tape before the jet flew on to Heathrow, which I find unbelievable,” he added. “As disabled people we are treated like third-rate passengers anyway, but this has been a nightmare and there is no way we will ever fly BA again.

“In all, 14 days of our 30-day holiday was spoiled and the stress of the situation has badly affected my mother. She hasn’t had a very good year and has actually got worse since coming home, and a lot of it is down to the worry of what happened.”

The family were sanctioned by BA to buy new disabled scooters and he has shelled out more than £3500 on those in the hope payment will soon come through but he is seething over BA’s approach to the issue.

“I’m still hundreds of pounds out of pocket and have had no one talk to me about the stress and inconvenience we suffered,” he said. “I’ve spoken to their customer service department but no one could confirm that they have received the complaint I faxed them and they refused to pass me to a customer services supervisor when I asked to speak to someone higher up.”

He has also contacted his local MSP John Swinney about the debacle.

BA have yet to respond to The Courier over a request about Mr Grindlay’s complaints.