Bob’s battle for Teesside Airshow refund after tickets were sent back with ‘no such address’

A Teesside Airshow ticket holder has opened up about his battle for a refund – labelling the situation as ‘unjust’.

Bob Norton was travelling with some fellow camera enthusiasts on an exciting trip out to the 2022 airshow at Teesside International Airport, hoping to capture some exciting shots. What the 72-year-old didn’t account for was gridlock on the roads around Teesside’s first airshow in five years that left hundreds of drivers stuck.

The former British Steel worker decided to follow the refund process which he saw set out by Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen on Facebook – but his letter was returned by Royal Mail with a tick beside ‘no such address.’ After months of battling for his money back, he has found out he posted the letter past a deadline date – something he feels was not published sufficiently.

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SkyLive Air declined to comment on the situation. However, information about the deadline date of July 4 was published on their website and can be seen on the homepage here.

Bob, from Middlesbrough, said: “Me and two colleagues said ‘look we’re not going there for bang on 10am because there will be crowds all over the place’. So we didn’t leave home until 9.30am. We got as far as the turn-off on the A66, we were going up to the A66 and got to the turn-off that is called Durham Lane. We were stuck – we couldn’t get off – we got there about 9.50am.

“We had no way of turning off the road until we got to the one that goes up to Mill Lane, to Long Newton, but we thought that would be no good. The next turn-off, of course, was the one that effectively takes you onto the road of the airport. By the time we got there, it was 1pm and we could still see that the traffic was queuing all the way down the road to the airport.

“I said to the lads ‘look it’s taken us the best part of three hours to get from Durham Lane to here. What do you want to do?’ So it got to 1pm and we thought it could be 3pm before we get to the airport and we could hear all sorts of things on the radio about traffic and chaos. So we just turned around at this point.”

Bob said the group ended up at the headland in Hartlepool to take some pictures as they didn’t want to “waste the day.” Bob said he was simply confused as to how the traffic chaos had unfolded, explaining: “I worked for British Steel for 40 years and one of my jobs, with a team of quite good people, was to manage what was the steel gala, which had been going on for a lot of years.

“So I know about crowd management, I know about traffic management, I know about maintenance of planning. I’m sitting there questioning myself saying: ‘how has this happened?'”

An investigation into the event described how passengers attending scheduled trips out from the airport actually missed their flights due to the traffic tailbacks. It also noted how just five traffic staff were on the ground to manage gridlock – and highlighted serious doubts over hosting another airshow event in the future.

Bob, an ex-Teesville Labour ward councillor and former cabinet member for regeneration, added: “What was worse was actually seeing people getting out of cars and disappearing into the hedges to use them as a toilet! It really wasn’t pleasant at all.”

He is now looking to do this for the sum of £72.18, which covers the initial cost of tickets, parking and insurance, and other costs. He said he “simply wants his money back.”

Bob continued: “I’m not being bitter or twisted – I just don’t like unjust situations. This is a big organisation and I am the small guy. And I don’t know how many people got the same reaction as me.”

Deadline date

It has since come to light that the reason Bob had his tickets returned by Royal Mail was that he posted them on July 7, which was three days after the deadline set by SkyLive Air for July 4. However, Bob has hit out at this, claiming he was completely unaware there was even a date to send them by.

He said: “‘It’s an equation of how well they published the times. The publication of that information was scant – I would question whether the time allowed for people to apply was less than reasonable.”

He says there was a six-day gap between the refund process announcement posted by Mr Houchen on June 28 and the deadline. He used the example of a family being on holiday for a week and not being able to claim any refunds to explain his upset about the situation.

On Facebook, a number of ticket holders have posted about also being unaware of the deadline set out on the website. One person said: “It was on their website apparently! But not published anywhere else, absolute joke!”

The Tees Valley Combined Authority did not wish to comment.

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