It’s home sweet home for surprise birthday break jet-setters from Germany

By Louise Roseingrave and Eoin English

Thursday, April 22, 2010

A SURPRISE 50th birthday break lasted a week longer than planned for a German family who finally got home yesterday after flights resumed at Cork Airport.

Daughters Marieka and Melanie Thoben brought mum, Marlene, to Ireland together with Melanie’s boyfriend, Marcel, to celebrate the milestone.

But their return flight last Saturday morning was one of thousands cancelled by the volcanic cloud.

"It’s been very beautiful and we had the best weather we could imagine, but we have all missed work for the past three days and now we just want to leave," Marieka said.

"It was a great birthday – we had a wonderful time, it’s certainly something I will never forget," mum Marlene said.

The family travelled twice in the past five days to Cork airport hoping to secure flights to Amsterdam, from where they planned to take a three-hour train journey to Oldenburg in Germany.

They said they loved Ballycotton, Youghal and Kinsale but were looking forward to getting home.

Suphattra Parks arrived at the airport in plenty of time to catch the same flight to Amsterdam, with plans to travel onwards to Bangkok, where she will introduce her three-month-old baby daughter, Natasha, to her family.

Husband Paul, from Ballincollig, said though they had not been delayed, they had feared the worst.

"It’s a big occasion for Suphattra, bringing the baby to Bangkok and we had no idea if the flight would go or not. The worst part was the lack of information about flights departing," he said.

"We had been watching people stranded abroad and it looked like it was terrible for them."

Student Emma O’Donovan had been waiting since Sunday to depart Cork and missed important deadlines for assignments at her college course in Cardiff. She secured a 3.15pm flight from Cork to Bristol yesterday and intended to travel the final leg of the journey by train.

"I’ve been all over the place trying to organise a way to get back there, I think I have an ulcer after it, I’m just happy I can finally go," she laughed.

Cork Airport Authority also confirmed that it has cancelled excess parking charges for passengers whose return flights were delayed.

The airport’s aviation marketing manager, Kevin Cullinane, said passengers who present their original travel documents, showing their intended arrival date, would not have to pay any extra parking charges incurred after that date.

Details of the waiver scheme are also be available on the airport’s website, corkairport.com.

Meanwhile, there was good news for the airport yesterday with the announcement of a new Cork to Galway air service.

Isle of Man-based airline Manx2.com will begin the 14 flights per week service on July 2.

It will operate two return flights each week day, with a late flight on Friday night and Sunday night at 8pm in addition to earlier 4.05pm departures.

"The addition of this new route will assist the economic, tourism and social interaction between Cork and Galway and enhance the prospects of attracting significant investment to the region," Mr Cullinane said.

Manx2.com carries 100,000 passengers a year between the Isle of Man and Blackpool, Belfast, Leeds Bradford, East Midlands, Newcastle, Gloucester and Jersey.

This appeared in the printed version of the Irish Examiner Thursday, April 22, 2010