{"id":302378,"date":"2025-07-29T22:56:15","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:56:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302378\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T22:56:15","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T22:56:15","slug":"i-turned-up-at-the-airport-for-my-holiday-but-i-was-a-year-too-early","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/302378\/","title":{"rendered":"I turned up at the airport for my holiday – but I was a YEAR too early"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rafael and Maggie Karoulla arrived at the airport when they realised the mistake\"RafaelRafael and Maggie Karoulla(Image: Rafael Karoulla \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

Two siblings got a big surprise when they arrived at the airport to catch their flight, only to realise they were a whole year early.<\/p>\n

Rafael Karoulla from Manchester and his sister Maggie were catching their EasyJet flight to Barcelona from Gatwick airport.<\/p>\n

But when they tried to check in online ahead of the trip they ran into an issue – they’d accidentally booked tickets for 2026, not 2025.<\/p>\n

Rafael, 28, works in advertising, and was left shocked when he discovered what had happened.<\/p>\n

Never miss a story with the MEN’s daily Catch Up newsletter – get it in your inbox by signing up <\/strong>here<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

“I was really confident it was 2025,” he said. “You wouldn’t think you could book for a year ahead. Once we got to London we had five hours to spend.<\/p>\n

“We tried to do it online [check-in]. We realised we’d booked for 2026.<\/p>\n

“I started laughing.”<\/p>\n

\"TheThe siblings had been travelling in Thailand and then Rome(Image: Rafael Karoulla \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

Prior to their trip to Spain, Rafael and flight attendant Maggie, 30, had been travelling in Thailand before heading back to the UK via Rome.<\/p>\n

The plan had been to fly over to London before setting off for Spain.<\/p>\n

And in the midst of all those flights, Rafael realised he had gotten mixed up when making the booking for Barcelona.<\/p>\n

Join the Manchester Evening News WhatsApp group <\/strong>HERE<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

He said: “I was booking so many flights I didn’t check that much. She was a bit p***ed at me. But she was laughing at the same time.<\/p>\n

“We were shocked.”<\/p>\n

Due to the date being incorrect the pair were not allowed to board the flight, for which they had paid around \u00a3100 each.<\/p>\n

\"TheThe pair were left ‘shocked’ when they found out(Image: Rafael Karoulla \/ SWNS)<\/p>\n

Fortunately, they were able to get another last minute booking onto a trip the same day for \u00a370 each.<\/p>\n

Rafael said: “We still have another ticket for next year – but we probably won’t use it.<\/p>\n

The 28-year-old said he would now be a lot more careful when making bookings.<\/p>\n

He said: “I didn’t think it was possible to book a year early.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rafael and Maggie Karoulla arrived at the airport when they realised the mistakeRafael and Maggie Karoulla(Image: Rafael Karoulla…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":302379,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[51,183,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-302378","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-business","8":"tag-business","9":"tag-travel","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114938995381186895","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302378","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302378"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302378\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/302379"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302378"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302378"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302378"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}