wrong

Linda Trestrail, 69, and Wendy Russell, 71, had their tickets checked five times but still ended up on the wrong flight. The pair have blasted Jet2 for the “catalogue of disasters”

Two elderly women have slammed Jet2 saying their holiday was “ruined” after a major airport error.

Linda Trestrail, 69, and Wendy Russell, 71, had their boarding passes verified five times but still ended up on the incorrect aircraft. The blunder was only discovered when the captain announced they were touching down in Menorca instead of Majorca.

Jet2 apologised for the “human error” and blamed it partly on the special assistance provider at Bristol Airport. But the women were left furious about the “catalogue of disasters” and claimed they had not received any compensation at the time of the incident.

READ MORE: Brit tourist found floating dead in pool 17 minutes from Love Island villa

Linda said: “You hear of bags going on the wrong flights but not people. The reason we booked Majorca is because of the short flight, we knew our mobility wasn’t good so didn’t want to do much travelling – we are disabled pensioners.”

She added: “You get compensated if you get delayed or lose luggage – but they lost us, not the b****y baggage.”

The pair were given wheelchair assistance at Bristol Airport and helped onto the shuttle bus and plane. Linda said they showed their tickets to the luggage desk, security, a gate desk person, and a ground crew member on the bus – who even did a head count.

She added: “Jet2 are the only ones who do double security check on tickets – so they did that, and then we were directed to our seats on the flight. A cabin crew member asked if we were in the right seats, I said yes but she took our tickets away and confirmed we were in the correct seats.

“Then the captain says we’re landing in Menorca in 10 minutes. Chaos ensued. I cried to Wendy, ‘Oh my god, Wendy! He said Menorca not Majorca!’ I told the flight attendant we were on the wrong plane – and she burst out laughing.

“Our tickets were checked five times – even by the flight attendant twice on the plane. Two passengers had flown from Bristol Airport to Menorca – and Jet2 didn’t even know who was on their plane.”

It emerged that three seats on that flight were vacant, and Wendy and Linda were occupying two of them – settling into the numbered seats they had been allocated on their original flight to Palma De Majorca. The stunned pair were instructed to remain on the aircraft, as the captain introduced himself and confessed he had never witnessed or encountered such a blunder in his entire career.

Despite his offer to personally fly the ladies back to Majorca, Linda claims that Jet2’s CEO, Steve Heapy, “was going mental”, and they were unable to return to Majorca or even stay on the plane “due to security reasons”.

Wendy, who has undergone three brain surgeries and suffers from arthritis, expressed her disbelief: “We went through five major checks there and no one picked up the error – it begs the question about what is going on. They are banging on about security, security, security – but we could’ve been anybody.”

To add insult to injury, when they enquired about their luggage, they discovered their bags had arrived in Majorca without them.

Wendy highlighted this as a serious security breach: “I had my injection in my suitcase – our families were so worried. Our luggage was on the right plane as it took off with two bags without the passengers – that’s so concerning. They are allegedly so concerned about the seriousness of it, but whichever way you look at it it’s a major breach of security. Two suitcases that could have had anything in them.”

The women waited at Menorca airport with the “kind assistance” of a Jet2 manager, enduring several hours before travelling on an internal flight with other employees. Upon reaching their intended destination – Palma De Majorca – a private car was arranged to take the pair to their resort.

Linda said: “We were supposed to be at the resort for 1pm – but neither of us knew what time it was by now. The transport coach we had booked had gone hours and hours ago – and from minute we left home it was around 17 hours later our feet and legs were like balloons”.

“Then the Jet2 rep at the resort wouldn’t even meet us there, she called me and said she had left – and apparently didn’t have time to see to two disabled pensioners – I was furious.”

The journey that ought to have taken them just five hours from departing their homes at 3am on 26 September – dragged on for more than 17 hours.

Linda and Wendy say they crumpled in their room when they finally arrived. But the letdown continued for the unlucky pair – who by this stage were in “such an awful state”. Linda says she got a phone call from a different Jet2 representative two days afterwards, offering the disabled women a ‘complimentary excursion’ – despite them being unable to walk.

She revealed: “He told us that because of our ordeal, they were going to give us a free excursion – I said ‘Are you joking – a what? Do you realise we can’t even walk let alone go for an excursion?

“We’ve been in a state. He replied it was a gesture of good will for what we’ve been through, I honestly thought he was joking and said I’m putting in formal complaint before we leave – we couldn’t go anywhere with our legs and feet swollen and we were in such a bad state. He told us to go to the CEO, Steven Heapy, when we got home and said we would be compensated.”

Wendy and Linda found themselves the talk of the town during their holiday, with Linda recounting: “We went on the beach one day and a man came up to us and said, ‘You two aren’t the ladies who were put on the wrong flight?’ Everyone knew us. We tried to make the best of the situation – but honestly, it was disgraceful.”

The duo, who confessed to feeling “terrified” during their return flight to England on October 6, 2023, claimed their holiday was “ruined”. They have been waiting for a response from Jet2 since then, despite their travel agent from Hays Travel and their children reaching out to the airline.

They say they’ve only received an apology from Bristol Airport so far.

They are still seeking compensation for their “spoilt” holiday. Wendy stated: “You put your faith in these people and when you think of the checks, with tickets passed backwards and forwards plus they were checked again on the plane. There were two Jet2 planes at fault and Bristol Airport. Luckily it was trauma for us – but for someone else, it could have been a lot worse – a lot worse, and this should never happen again.”

Jet2 has since apologised for the mishap. A spokesperson stated: “We would like to offer our sincere apologies to Mses. Trestrail and Russell for this incident. This is an extremely isolated incident and although there was no security risk, we have of course investigated it as a matter of urgency, including with the third-party special assistance provider. We can confirm that the customers went through security correctly, and their luggage was also screened correctly.

“However, after these checks the customers were taken to the incorrect aircraft, which is the responsibility of the third-party special assistance provider at the airport. Upon boarding the aircraft, the incorrect destination on their boarding passes was unfortunately not identified and we apologise for this oversight which was down to human error.

“We have carried out additional training with the team to ensure this does not happen again. As soon as we learned of the issue, our team booked Mses. Trestrail and Russell onto the soonest available flight from Menorca to Majorca and they also provided all the assistance they could both throughout their journey and the rest of their holiday.

“We have been in touch with Mses. Trestrail and Russell to offer an appropriate gesture of goodwill and once again offer our sincere apologies. We understand they are due to travel with us once again this year, and we look forward to welcoming them onboard and delivering the usual VIP customer experience that we are recognised for.”

A spokesperson for Bristol Airport said: “Thank you for bringing this matter to our attention, we will continue to work with the airline and the special assistance provider to further investigate the circumstances and introduce improvements for the future.”

Frankie Muniz may be the only actor who has been nominated for an Emmy award and driven in a NASCAR event at Daytona. But if Muniz had been old enough to get a driver’s license before he moved to Hollywood, there may never have been a “Malcolm in the Middle.”

“When I’m in that race car and I put my visor down and I drive out of that pit lane, I feel like I’m exactly where I’m supposed to be,” he said. “That’s what I’m supposed to do and that’s what I’m doing.”

And acting?

“I don’t feel like I’m a good actor,” he said. “I know I can act. But when I look at good acting, I go ‘dang, I could never do that’.”

That’s not true, of course. Muniz, who started acting when he was 12, has been credited in 26 films and 37 TV shows, including the title role in “Malcolm in the Middle,” which earned him two Golden Globe nominations and one Emmy nod during its seven-year run on Fox.

But acting was a profession. Racing is a passion.

“Excitement and all the emotions. That’s what I love about racing,” he said. “The highs are so high and the lows are unbelievably low. It’s awesome.”

Muniz placed 28th in the NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series race at Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday. He is 23rd among the 64 drivers listed in the series points standings, with his one top-10 finish coming in the season opener at Daytona.

Muniz, 39, isn’t the first actor to try racing. Paul Newman was a four-time SCCA national champion who finished second in the 24 Hours of Le Mans in 1979 while Patrick Dempsey (“Grey’s Anatomy,” “Can’t Buy Me Love”) has driven sports cars at Le Mans and in the Rolex 24 at Daytona, in addition to other series.

Frankie Muniz qualifies at Daytona International Speedway in February.

(Phelan M. Ebenhack / Associated Press)

But driving isn’t a side hustle for Muniz, who last October signed with North Carolina-based Reaume Brothers Racing to be the full-time driver of the team’s No. 33 Ford in the truck series. Muniz also raced twice last year in the NASCAR Xfinity Series.

“When I originally started racing, I was kind of at the height of my [acting] career. I had tons of offers to do movies and shows and all that,” said Muniz, who made his stock-car debut in the fall of 2021 in Bakersfield, then accepted an offer to drive full time in the ARCA Menards Series in 2023. “Very easily could have stayed in that business. But I wanted to give racing a try. And to compete at the top level, you have to put in the time and effort that professional race car drivers are doing, right? You can’t do it halfway.”

Muniz was into racing before he even thought about acting. Growing up in North Carolina, he remembers waking early on the weekend to watch IndyCar and NASCAR races on TV. No one else in his family shared his interest in motorsports, so when his parents divorced shortly after Muniz was discovered acting in a talent show at age 8, his mother moved to Burbank, where he made his film debut alongside Louis Gossett Jr. in 1997’s “To Dance With Olivia.”

Two years later he was cast as the gifted middle child of a dysfunctional working-class family in the successful sitcom “Malcolm in the Middle.” Motorsports continued to tug at him so after running in a few celebrity events, Muniz twice put his acting career on hold to race, first in 2007 — shortly after “Malcolm” ended after seven seasons and 151 episodes — when he started a three-season run in the open-wheel Atlantic Championship series.

Still, Muniz, who lives with his wife Paige and 4-year-old son Mauz in Scottsdale, Ariz., is dogged by criticism he is little more than a weekend warrior who is using his substantial Hollywood reputation and earnings to live out his racing fantasies.

“I don’t spend any of my money going racing,” he said. “I made a promise to my wife that I would not do that. So I can kill that rumor right there.”

But those whispers persist partly because Muniz hasn’t completely cut ties with acting. Because the truck series doesn’t run every weekend, racing 25 times between Valentine’s Day and Halloween, Muniz had time to tape a “Malcolm in the Middle” reunion miniseries that is scheduled to air on Disney+ in December.

He has also appeared in two other TV projects and two films since turning to racing full time. But his focus, he insists, is on driving.

“If I wanted to go racing for fun,” he said, “I would not be racing in the truck series. I’d be racing at my local track or I’d be racing some SCCA club events. I want to be one of the top drivers there are. I want to make it as high up in NASCAR as I can. And I’m doing everything I can to do that.”

Fame outside of racing can be a double-edged sword in the high-cost world of NASCAR. It can open doors to a ride and sponsorships others can’t get, but it can also cause jealousy in the garage, with drivers crediting that fame and not talent for a rival’s success. And Muniz isn’t the only rookie driver who has had to deal with that.

Toni Breidinger, who finished 27th in Friday’s race and is one place and eight points ahead of Muniz in the season standings with nine races left, is a model who has posed for Victoria’s Secret and been featured in the pages of Glamour, GQ and Sports Illustrated’s swimsuit edition. She’s also a good driver who has been going fast on a racetrack far longer than she’s been walking slowly down a catwalk.

Toni Breidinger prepares for NASCAR Craftsman Truck Series practice at Lucas Oil Indianapolis Raceway Park on Friday.

(Justin Casterline / Getty Images)

“I was definitely a racer before anything. That was definitely my passion,” said Breidinger, who started driving go-karts in Northern California when she was 9. “I’ve been lucky enough to be able to do modeling to help support that passion. But at the end of the day, I definitely consider myself a racer. That’s what I grew up doing and that’s the career I’ve always wanted do to.”

Still, she sees the two pursuits as being complementary. When Breidinger appears on a red carpet, as she did before this month’s ESPY Awards in Los Angeles, it helps her modeling career while at the same time giving the sponsors of her racing team — which includes 818 Tequila, Dave & Buster’s and the fashion brand Coach — added value.

“It’s all part of the business. It all goes back into my racing,” said Breidinger, 26, who is of German and Lebanese descent. “The side hustles, I like to call them. I don’t think that takes away from me being a race car driver.”

Breidinger, who won the USAC western asphalt midget series title as a teenager, raced in the ARCA Menards Series for five years before stepping up to truck series in 2021, making NASCAR history in 2023 when she finished 15th in her first race, the best-ever debut by a female driver. That helped her land a full-time ride this season with Tricon Garage, Toyota’s flagship team in the truck series.

Like Muniz, Breidinger sees the truck series, the third tier of NASCAR’s national racing series, as a steppingstone to a seat in a Cup car.

“I want to climb the national ladder. That’s what I’m here to do,” she said. “I wouldn’t be doing this if I didn’t have long-term plans and long-term goals. I’m a very competitive person, especially with myself.”

Kyle Larson, who climbed to the top of that ladder, running his first NASCAR national series race in a truck in 2012, then winning the 2021 Cup championship nine years later, said the path he took — and the one Muniz and Breidinger are following — is a well-worn one.

“Anybody racing in any of the three series has talent and ability enough to be there,” he said.

Funding, Larson said, and not talent and ability, often determines how fast a driver can make that climb and that might be a problem for Muniz since Josh Reaume, the owner of the small three-truck team Muniz drives for, has complained about the price of racing. It can cost more than $3.5 million a year to field one competitive truck in the 25-race series — and that cost is rising, threatening to price many out of the sport.

But having drivers like Muniz and Breidinger in NASCAR will help everyone in the series, Larson said, because it will bring in fans and sponsors that might not have been attracted to the sport otherwise.

“I just hope that he can get into a situation someday where you can really see his talent from being in a car or a truck that is better equipped to go run towards the front,” Larson said of Muniz. “You want to see him succeed because if he does succeed, it’s only going to do good things for our sport.”

And if it works out the way Muniz hopes, perhaps he’ll someday be the answer to another trivia question: Name the NASCAR champion who once worked in Hollywood.

President Trump has the answer to homelessness.

Forcibly clear the streets.

On Thursday, he signed an executive order to address “endemic vagrancy” and end “crime and disorder on our streets.” He called for the use of “civil commitments” to get those who suffer from mental illness or addiction into “humane treatment.”

Steve Lopez

Steve Lopez is a California native who has been a Los Angeles Times columnist since 2001. He has won more than a dozen national journalism awards and is a four-time Pulitzer finalist.

This comes after last year’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling making it legal for cities to punish people for being homeless, even if they have nowhere to go.

There’s some truth in what he says, and California’s record on housing and homelessness is ripe for criticism. I’ve watched too many people suffer from addiction and mental illness and asked why the help is so slow to arrive. But I also know there are no simple answers for either crisis, and bluster is no substitute for desperately needed resources.

Like a lot of what Trump does, this is another case of grandstanding. In the meantime, the Washington Post reported Thursday that the “Trump administration has slashed more than $1 billion in COVID-era grants administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and is proposing to slash hundreds of millions more in agency grants.”

Wendell Blassingame sits at the entrance to San Julian Park in downtown Los Angeles in 2023.

(Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)

As it happens, I was in the middle of a column on the latest Los Angeles homeless count when news of Trump’s executive order broke. I had just spent time with two homeless women to hear about their predicaments, and none of what Trump is proposing comes close to addressing their needs, which are tragically commonplace.

Namely, they’re living in poverty and can’t afford a place to live.

In his executive order, Trump said that “nearly two-thirds of homeless individuals report having used hard drugs … in their lifetimes. An equally large share of homeless individuals reported suffering from mental health conditions.”

I don’t know where he got those numbers, but truth and accuracy are not hallmarks of this administration.

No doubt, addiction and mental illness are significant factors, and more intervention is needed.

But that’s more complicated than he thinks, especially given the practical and legal issues surrounding coercive treatment — and it’s not going to solve the problem.

When the latest homeless count in Los Angeles was released, a slight decline from a year ago was regarded by many as a positive sign. But when Eli Veitzer of Jewish Family Service L.A. dug into the numbers, he found something both unsurprising and deeply disturbing.

The number of homeless people 65 and older hadn’t gone down. It had surged, in both the city and county of Los Angeles.

“This isn’t new this year. It’s a trend over the last couple of years,” said Veitzer, whose nonprofit provides meals, housing assistance and various other services to clients. “It’s meaningful, and it’s real, and these people are at the highest risk of mortality while they’re on the streets.”

The numbers from the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority showed a 3.4% decrease in the total homeless population in the city, but a 17.6% increase among those 65 and older. The county numbers showed a 3.99% decrease overall, but an 8.59% increase in the 65 and older group.

In the city, the increase over two years was from 3,427 in 2023 to 4,680 this year — up 37%.

Reliable research has shown that among older adults who become homeless, the primary reason is the combination of poverty and high housing costs, rather than mental illness or addiction.

A man smokes inside a tent on Los Angeles’ Skid Row in March 2020.

(Marcio Jose Sanchez / Associated Press)

“They or their spouse lost their job, they or their spouse got sick, their marriage broke up or their spouse or parent died,” Dr. Margot Kushel of UC San Francisco’s Homelessness and Housing Initiative was telling me several hours before Trump’s executive order was issued.

Her team’s landmark study, released two years ago (and covered by my colleague Anita Chabria), found that nearly half the state’s homeless residents were 50 and older, and that participants in the study reported a median monthly household income of $960.

“The results … confirm that far too many Californians experience homelessness because they cannot afford housing,” Kushel said at the time.

Among the older population, Veitzer said, the jump in homelessness comes against the backdrop of federal and local budget cuts that will make it harder to reverse the trend. And harder for nonprofits, which rely in part on public funding, to keep providing group meals, home-delivered meals, transportation, social services and housing support.

“Every provider I’ve talked to in the city of L.A. is cutting meal programs,” Veitzer said. “We’re going to have to close two of our 13 meal sites, and last year we closed three. We used to have 16, and now we’re down to 11.”

On Wednesday, I went to one of the sites that’s still up and running on Santa Monica Boulevard, just west of the 405, and met Jane Jefferies, 69. She told me she’s been camping in her vehicle since February when living with her brother became impossible for various reasons. She now pulls into a Safe Parking L.A. lot each night to bed down.

Jefferies said she collects about $1,400 a month in Social Security, which isn’t enough to get her into an apartment. At the senior center, she uses her own equipment to make buttons that she sells on the Venice boardwalk, where she can make up to $200 on a good weekend.

But that’s still not enough to cover the cost of housing, she told me, and she’s given up on government help.

“All the funding has been cut, and I don’t know if it’s because a lot of the city and state funding is subsidized by the federal government. We all know Trump hates California,” she said.

As Veitzer put it: “There’s nowhere near enough low-income senior housing in L.A. County. Wait lists open up periodically,” with far more applicants than housing units. “And then they close.”

His agency delivers a daily meal to Vancie Davis, 73, who lives in a van at Penmar Park in Venice. Her next-door neighbor is her son, Thomas Williamson, 51, who lives in his car.

Davis was in the front seat of the van when I arrived, hugging her dog, Heart. Her left leg was amputated below the knee two years ago because of an infection, she told me.

Davis said she and another son were living in a trailer in Oregon, but the owner shut off the utilities and changed the locks. She said she reached out to Williamson, who told her, “I’ve got a van for you, so you’ll have a place to live, but it’s going to be rough. And it is. It’s very, very rough.”

I’ve heard so many variations of stories like these over the years, I’ve lost count.

The magnitude that exists in the wealthiest nation in history is a disgrace, and a sad commentary on an economic system and public policy that have served to widen, rather than narrow, the inequity gap.

On Thursday, Trump’s executive order on homelessness grabbed headlines but will do nothing for Jane Jefferies or Vancie Davis and for thousands like them. We know the interventions that can work, Kushel said, but with deep cuts in the works, we’re moving in the wrong direction.

Davis’ son Thomas told Times photographer Genaro Molina about another person who lives in a vehicle and has been a neighbor of theirs in the parking lot.

She wasn’t there Wednesday, but we’ll check back.

It’s a 91-year-old woman.

[email protected]

Florida’s top emergency official asked a federal judge on Monday to resist a request by environmentalists to halt an immigration detention center known as Alligator Alcatraz in the middle of the Florida Everglades because their lawsuit was filed in the wrong jurisdiction.

Even though the property is owned by Miami-Dade County, Florida’s southern district is the wrong venue for the lawsuit since the detention center is located in neighboring Collier County, which is in the state’s middle district. Decisions about the facility also were made in Tallahassee and Washington, Kevin Guthrie, executive director for the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said in a court filing.

“And all the detention facilities, all the buildings, and all the paving at issue are sited in Collier County, not Miami-Dade,” Guthrie said.

Environmental groups filed a lawsuit in Florida’s southern district last month, asking for the project being built on an airstrip in the heart of the Florida Everglades to be halted because the process didn’t follow state and federal environmental laws. A virtual hearing was being held Monday on the lawsuit.

Critics have condemned the facility as a cruel and inhumane threat to the ecologically sensitive wetlands, while Republican Gov. Ron DeSantis and other state officials have defended it as part of the state’s aggressive push to support President Trump’s crackdown on illegal immigration.

U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem has praised Florida for coming forward with the idea, as the department looks to significantly expand its immigration detention capacity.

Schneider writes for the Associated Press.