angry

A holiday in Lanzarote turned into a nightmare for the family after John suffered a heart attack – and then they had issues when trying to get their sons home

A father of two was on holiday with his family when he suffered a heart attack, but faced turmoil when trying to fly their children home.

John Evans, 61, from Cardiff, Wales, had been on holiday with his wife, Annette, and their two children, aged 12 and 15, at the time, when he started to feel unwell. While they were enjoying a sun-soaked getaway at a resort in Lanzarote, John felt unwell. When his wife, a nurse, became concerned, they called a doctor. The next thing they knew, John was told to go to hospital.

“At that stage, I didn’t want to make a fuss, but I thought fair enough. I hadn’t had much chest pain at the point, but I was light-headed,” John told the Mirror. At the hospital John was undergoing an ECH when he began to experience “severe pain”.

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The 61-year-old explained: “They said, ‘he’s having a heart attack now’. My wife was asked to leave the room, and they put some lines in me. I was vomiting and not very well at that stage, but they managed to put a stent in. Basically, there was an occlusion (blockage) in my left main stem artery, which is the worst possible place to have an occlusion. But then the stent got blocked, so they had to shock me a couple of times.”

Thankfully, John came around, and was taken to Cardiac Care Unit where he remained for three days, before being transferred to another ward in the hospital. Yet, as his heart attack happened the day before the family were due to fly home, the parents were left with the additional stress of trying to get their children home.

“My wife was obviously very upset, and we didn’t know how long I’d need to be in the hospital for,” John said. “We didn’t really want the kids getting worried, so we thought it was best they flew home with the other family (they had been on holiday with), and my sister would then meet them at the airport in the UK. We weren’t sure what we needed for them to fly without us.”

John and Annette signed a note confirming they had given consent for another family to travel with their two children back to the UK. Annette went with the group to Lanzarote airport to ensure everything went smoothly. As they had all checked in to their flight online the day before, they went through airport security and to their departure gate.

However, when they got to the gate, John claimed that his wife was told by easyJet staff that the children couldn’t travel without their parents onboard. John alleged: “They had our four boarding passes and a letter with our consent, but they point-blank refused and said that we had to get a letter from Guardia Civil to allow the kids to fly without parents, which was a bit of a shock. I had spoken to other people who have travelled with their own kids and taken other kids on holiday, and they never had any problems.”

As a result, their children had to stay in Lanzarote, which John said “put a bit more stress on the wife” who had to find an Airbnb near the hospital and start making plans for how to get their children home, as it was unclear how long John would remain in hospital.

It’s worth noting that easyJet states on its website that children aged 15 years and younger cannot travel unless they are accompanied by an adult. The airline also confirmed to the Mirror that, for British nationals, children under 15 can travel with another adult provided they have written consent from the child’s parent or legal guardian, but said there are different regulations for children of certain nationalities or when travelling to/from specific countries. However, the child must be on the same booking as the adult they are travelling with.

Annette went to the Guardia Civil to inquire about what they needed for their children to travel back to the UK with their godmother, who had flown out to Lanzarote. However, the couple say she was told by staff there that they didn’t need a letter from Guardia Civil, despite what they’d been told at the airport.

After this, they rebooked flights with another airline for their two sons and their godmother to fly home together. John said. “They flew home without any bother on Monday. They didn’t check any documentation and didn’t ask for anything.”

The following Saturday, and after a week in hospital, John was able to fly back to the UK. But following the ordeal, John said: “My wife was struggling, and it was frustrating. I was a bit annoyed at easyJet as they had given my wife the wrong information during a fairly stressful time.”

While John was able to claim the majority of their additional expenses, including the flights, through travel insurance, the issue is not settled in his mind, as he feels that nobody addressed the fact they were given “wrong information at the gate”.

Annette got in touch with easyJet, who apologised for the “challenges you all faced at Lanzarote airport”. However, John said he still feels “quite angry” at the whole situation as “the boys were struggling, their dad was in hospital, and they were in a nasty position – they had to stay around when they could have been at home, out of the stress”.

A spokesperson for easyJet told the Mirror: “We are very sorry to hear about Mr Evan’s circumstances and fully understand this will have been a stressful time for the family.

“We take the safeguarding of minors very seriously and have processes in place to ensure their wellbeing and to support our customers should their children need to be accompanied by someone other than their parent or legal guardian. This includes ensuring children are on the same booking as the adults they are travelling with, and we can make these changes to a booking for customers ahead of travel.

“Whilst Mr and Mrs Evans provided a letter of consent, as their children were on a separate booking to the adults they were travelling with, they were unfortunately unable to travel. We are in touch with the family about their experience and are offering any further assistance they may need.”

Eaton wildfire survivors’ anger about Southern California Edison’s burying of electric wires in Altadena boiled over Tuesday with residents calling on government officials to temporarily halt the work.

In a letter to the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, more than 120 Altadena residents and the town’s council wrote that they had witnessed “manifest failures” by Edison in recent months as it has been tearing up streets and digging trenches to bury the wires.

The residents cited the unexpected financial cost of the work to homeowners and possible harm to the town’s remaining trees. They also pointed out how the work will leave telecommunication wires above ground on poles.

“The current lack of coordination is compounding the stress of a community still reeling from the Eaton Fire, and risks causing further irreparable harm,” the residents wrote.

The council voted unanimously Tuesday night to send the letter.

Scott Johnson, an Edison spokesman, said Wednesday that the company has been working to address the concerns, including by looking for other sources of funds to help pay for the homeowners’ costs.

“We recognize this community has already faced a number of challenges,” he said.

Johnson said the company will allow homeowners to keep existing overhead lines connecting their homes to the grid if they are worried about the cost.

Edison’s crews, Johnson said, have also been trained to use equipment that avoids roots and preserves the health of trees.

The utility has said that burying the wires as the town rebuilds thousands of homes destroyed in the fire will make the electrical grid safer and more reliable.

But anger has grown as work crews have shown up unexpectedly and residents learned they’re on the hook to pay tens of thousands of dollars to connect their homes to the buried lines.

Residents have also found the crews digging under the town’s oak and pine trees that survived last year’s fire. Arborists say the trenches could destroy the roots of some of the last remaining trees and kill them.

Amy Bodek, the county’s regional planning director, recently warned Edison that a government ordinance protects oak trees and that “utility trenching is not exempt from these requirements.”

Residents have also pointed out that in much of Altadena, the telecom companies, including Spectrum and AT&T, have not agreed to bury their wires in Edison’s trenches. That means the telecom wires will remain on poles above ground, which residents say is visually unappealing.

“While our community supports the long-term benefits of moving utilities underground, the current execution by SCE is placing undue financial and planning burdens on homeowners, causing irreparable harm to our heritage tree canopy, and proceeding without adequate local oversight,” the residents wrote.

They want the project halted until the problems are addressed.

Edison announced last year that it would spend as much as $925 million to underground and rebuild its grid in Altadena and Malibu, where the Palisades fire caused devastation.

The work — which costs an estimated $4 million per mile — will earn the utility millions of dollars in profits as its electric customers pay for it over the next decades.

Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, told Gov. Gavin Newsom last year that state utility rules would require Altadena and Malibu homeowners to pay to underground the electric wire from their property line to the panel on their house. Pizarro estimated it would cost $8,000 to $10,000 for each home.

But some residents, who need to dig long trenches, say it will cost them much more.

“We are rebuilding and with the insurance shortfall, our finances are stretched already,” Marilyn Chong, an Altadena resident, wrote in a comment attached to the letter. “Incurring the additional burden of financing SCE’s infrastructure is not something we can or should have to do.”

Other fire survivors complained of Edison’s lack of planning and coordination with residents.

“I’ve started rebuilding, and apparently there won’t be underground power lines for me to connect with in time when my house will be done,” wrote Gail Murphy. “So apparently I’m supposed to be using a generator, and for how long!?”

Johnson said the company has set up a phone line for people with concerns or questions. That line — 1-800-250-7339 — is answered Monday through Saturday, he said.

Residents can also go to Edison’s office in Altadena at 2680 Fair Oaks Avenue. The office is open Monday to Friday from 8 to 4:30.

It’s unclear if the Eaton fire would have been less disastrous if Altadena’s neighborhood power lines had been buried.

The blaze ignited under Edison’s towering transmission lines that run through Eaton Canyon. Those lines carry bulk power through the company’s territory. In Altadena, Edison is burying the smaller distribution lines, which carry power to homes.

The government investigation into the cause of the fire has not yet been released. Pizarro has said that a leading theory is that a century-old transmission line, which had not carried power for 50 years, somehow re-energized to spark the blaze.

The fire killed at least 19 people and destroyed more than 9,400 homes and other structures.

The U.S. Air Force is continuing to expand on the capabilities of the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod, which just recently made its combat debut on the F-16 fighter in the latest conflict with Iran.

New testing has focused on improving the ability of HC-130J Combat King II combat search and rescue aircraft carrying the pods to receive reprogramming updates in near-real-time via satellite. HC-130Js just recently flew extremely high-risk and high-profile sorties over Iran as part of the effort to rescue the crew of a downed F-15E Strike Eagle. Being able to rapidly refine and optimize Angry Kitten’s capabilities will help the system remain as effective as possible, even in a very quickly evolving threat environment, and could be a stepping stone to more advanced functionality.

The Air National Guard Air Force Reserve Command Test Center (AATC) recently shared details about new testing of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J during an iteration of the Bamboo Eagle exercise. Bamboo Eagle is a large-scale air combat exercise series focused on preparedness for a high-end fight in the Pacific. AATC has already been test flying Angry Kitten on the HC-130J for more than a year now.

The pods have also been test flown on Air Force A-10 Warthog ground attack jets and Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet fighters. As noted, it is now being employed operationally on Air Force F-16s, as well. Angry Kitten was originally developed to replicate hostile electronic warfare threats during testing and training, as part of a cooperative effort between the Air Force and the Navy, and worked so well that it was adapted to operational use. We will come back to this later on.

During Bamboo Eagle, “AATC’s primary evaluation centered on the Angry Kitten electronic warfare pod integrated aboard a HC-130J Combat King II. The force development evaluation built directly on an operational assessment completed the previous year, which found the system potentially effective and suitable on the platform,” according to a press release that the center put out last week. “Testers incorporated recommendations from that assessment while the 130th Rescue Squadron flew the pod against simulated ship-based and ground-based threats during exercise vulnerability periods, evaluating both survivability and the system’s broader electronic attack capability.”

The 130th Rescue Squadron is part of the California Air National Guard’s 129th Rescue Wing.

“Running alongside that effort, AATC continued maturing the Ka/Ku-band communications suite, which enables over-the-horizon communications and near-real-time electronic warfare reprogramming via satellite link,” the release adds. “The suite compresses what was previously a multi-day technique development and distribution process to near-real-time between sorties.”

AATC has previously disclosed that it has been working on this capability, which looks to be unique to the integration of Angry Kitten on the HC-130J, at least currently. The Combat King II has the benefit of a wide-band satellite communication system, which is also found on U.S. special operations C-130 variants and other aircraft. The HC-130J carries the pod using a Special Airborne Mission Installation and Response (SABIR) system installed in place of its left rear paratrooper door.

“The C-130 testing features innovative real-time updates to electronic warfare techniques,” AATC said in a previous press release in March 2025. “Unlike the F-16 tests, where pre-programmed mission data files were used, the C-130 testing includes development engineers aboard the aircraft who can modify jamming techniques mid-mission based on feedback from range control.”

As can be seen above, to date, AATC has largely framed the benefits of this reprogramming capability within the context of accelerating continuing test and evaluation of Angry Kitten. At that same time, this would also be extremely valuable in an operational context.

In general, electronic warfare systems use built-in threat libraries to accurately detect, categorize, and respond to waveforms. In turn, their effectiveness is inherently determined by the breadth of data in that library. Specialists, often working in purpose-built reprogramming laboratories far from the front lines, have to work tirelessly to keep these systems up to date. Historically, this has been a very lengthy process, and one that has increasingly had trouble keeping pace with the rate at which threats are evolving.

As noted, Angry Kitten was developed first as a training and testing tool. It is a direct outgrowth of the AN/ALQ-167 electronic warfare pod, variants of which have been used in those contexts for decades to mimic hostile electronic warfare threats. However, Angry Kitten was designed from the start to be more readily updatable and modifiable in order to make it easier to adapt it to new and evolving threats.

“At the core of that technology is Angry Kitten’s Technique Description Language architecture. Georgia Tech designed TDL as a hybrid that pairs dedicated hardware modules for speed and bandwidth with software for complex decision-making,” according to a press release Naval Air Systems Command (NAVAIR) put out last month. “The practical result: government programmers can reprogram the jammer to counter new threats without sending it back to the contractor for expensive, time-consuming code changes. When an adversary adapts its radar tactics, NAWCWD’s team can update the jammer’s response in days instead of waiting months for a contract modification.”

Angry Kitten is also known to make use of advanced Digital Radio Frequency Memory (DRFM) technology. Using DRFM, radio frequency (RF) signals can be detected and ‘captured.’ Those same signals can then be manipulated and retransmitted. As an example of what this means in practice, signals from enemy air defense radars or radar seekers on incoming missiles can be recorded and pumped back in a way that creates false or otherwise confusing tracks. That same data can also be used as part of the reprogramming process to improve the stability capabilities, as well as be further exploited for general intelligence-gathering purposes.

This all already contributed to the evolution of Angry Kitten into an operational system.

“We had a jammer called ‘Angry Kitten.’ It was built to be an adversary air jamming tool,” now-retired Air Force Gen. Mark Kelly, then commander of Air Combat Command (ACC), told TWZ and other outlets back in 2022. “And all of a sudden, the blue team said, ‘you know, hey, we kind of need that, can we have that for us?’ And so I see this iterating and testing our way into this.”

When it comes to near-real-time updates for Angry Kitten, even if the communications suite used on the HC-130J won’t fit on smaller tactical jets, it could potentially be ported over into a capability that is readily deployable to forward locations. Another possibility is that an aircraft with a wide-band satellite communications system could then pass updates for Angry Kitten to other aircraft within line of sight using other datalink capabilities.

The underlying developments have further implications when it comes to developing so-called cognitive electronic warfare capabilities. Cognitive electronic warfare is a broad area of development focused on new technologies to further automate or otherwise accelerate the reprogramming process. The absolute ‘holy grail’ of the overall concept is an electronic warfare system that can adapt autonomously in real time to new threat waveforms, or known ones being modulated in unexpected ways, even right in the middle of a mission. You can read more about all of this here.

Ongoing work to expand and improve Angry Kitten’s capabilities will also now benefit from lessons learned from the employment of the pods in combat sorties over and around Iran.

The multi-day effort to recover the crew of an F-15E Strike Eagle downed in that country earlier this month also highlighted the immense risks involved in combat search and rescue (CSAR) operations, and the importance of adding new self-protection capabilities to the HC-130J, specifically. Air Force Combat King IIs can expect to face far greater threats while conducting CSAR missions during a conflict with a near-peer adversary like China. This has prompted questions about the utility of HC-130Js and other traditional CSAR assets in the context of any future high-end fight.

In the meantime, Angry Kitten continues to evolve in significant ways, including its growing ability to receive key updated data remotely in near-real-time when paired with the HC-130J.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com