A regional journalist and his friends have been left hundreds of pounds out of pocket after his stag party was thrown into doubt following an airline’s closure.
Kieran Beattie, reporter at Aberdeen daily the Press & Journal, had been due to fly to Antwerp today for his stag do along with 11 friends.
But the trip was almost cancelled after Belgian flight operators VLM airlines, with whom they were due to fly directly from Aberdeen, went into liquidation last Friday.
Luckily 26-year-old Kieran was able to organise alternative travel via Edinburgh and Amsterdam, with a train to their final destination of Brussels, but he and the rest of the stag party have each been left about £100 out of pocket.
Kieran, pictured, told the P&J: “When the email came through on Friday night I felt absolutely horrible.
“My best man Jordan has been working so hard over the past few months to organise not only my stag do, but another one for our pal James, and suddenly we were faced with calling off the trip entirely because of this airline – we just felt completely mugged off.
“Thankfully, we are being given a refund for the tickets, and we managed to find relatively cheap Easy Jet flights from Edinburgh, so as long as they don’t suddenly go bust as well, everything will go as planned.
“It’s not the best to have less money for beer, but at least it’s still going ahead.”
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Err…what?
How is this anything to do with journalism? Surely everyone on that flight, in many different sectors suffered in a similar way.
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Pete, absolutely agree. Whatever next?
– Journalist shocked by gift card refusal at House of Fraser
– Journalist in direct debit nightmare after double gas bill
– Journalist has dinner plans ruined over Gaucho restaurant voucher
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Bad luck to the chap, and all, but I do feel the distinction between journalists reporting on a story and becoming the story is becoming very blurred.
I could crack on about the ‘me, me, me’ effects of social media and how it’s gradually infiltrating the profession. But what the hell, it’s Friday at the end of my shift and I can’t be bothered.
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Oh come on fellows. HTFP is about journalists and journalism. If he had not been a journalist it would not have appeared on HTFP but would more than likely have been a story in a paper about stag party revellers being left stranded by a busted airline.
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It’s a story – full stop.
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