Blind man says Easyjet staff 'refused to help' him buy flights

A blind man has said Easyjet staff at an airport would not sell him a ticket in person and told him to use an app instead.

Martin Conway and his wife, who are both blind, wanted to buy flights from Liverpool to Belfast after missing an earlier plane due to traffic.

He said he was told he must book online but no-one was able to assist him.

Easyjet said it was "sorry to hear" that the couple did not receive the service they expected.

Mr Conway said they had missed their previously-booked flight after being delayed by two hours after congestion on the motorway.

The couple who are from Merseyside wanted to book available seats on a later Easyjet flight but staff at the check-in desk "told us they couldn't help us", he said.

Mr Conway added: "When we asked them how would we [book online], there was absolutely no answer to that question.

"It was basically you need to sort that out yourself and come back to us."

When the couple approached the airport's assistance team for help using the smartphone app "they were busy with various passengers coming in and out".

"They didn't offer to help us, they could see we were struggling but to be honest I didn't really expect that they could," he told BBC Radio Merseyside.

He said they ended up getting help to book online from an "outraged" taxi driver, who "couldn't believe that there was no-one actually willing to assist".

It "took some considerable time", he added.

Mr Conway said: "In a busy, noisy airport, it's not the easiest thing to try to listen to a phone and navigate your way through an app or a website in order to book a ticket.

"That's where people really do need a bit of assistance."

The couple managed to fly out in the end but Mr Conway felt "there wasn't one person whose job it was to actually assist us" who did, and "there wasn't one person who felt able to think outside the box to take five minutes to assist".

An Easyjet spokeswoman said: "We are very sorry to hear that Mr and Mrs Conway felt they did not receive the level of service they expected when they booked an Easyjet flight at the airport after they missed their flight with another carrier."

They said the staff who would usually be able to assist with the booking were "serving other customers so were not immediately available".

A statement from Liverpool John Lennon Airport read: "The handling agent Swissport, who represent Easyjet at the airport, and ABM, who provide the passenger assistance service, are both looking into this.

"We'll be working with both to ensure situations like this don't occur again, so that assistance is available to help make a flight booking on site, for people who are unable to make a booking themselves due to their disability."

Mr Conway said this "absolute total reliance on everything being done online" was excluding people.

"Mainstream technology moves faster than specialist technology so we're always kind of running behind and there is often that deficit but it does seem to be getting wider."