‘I can’t cope with this’: Flight cancellation dismay for Thurso man going through cancer treatment
A Thurso man who has been going through cancer treatment was dismayed when a scheduled flight from Wick was cancelled at short notice – causing him to miss an appointment for a hospital scan in Aberdeen.
Geoff Simpson was booked on Eastern Airways’ 11.05am service on Monday but received a call at around 9.15am telling him the flight was off for “technical reasons”.
He had been due to have a PET (positron emission tomography) scan at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary as part of his ongoing treatment for metastatic lung cancer, and opted to fly as the timetable would allow for the return journey to be made comfortably in one day.
“I was really upset,” Mr Simpson said. “It would be fair to say I was actually weeping, because I thought ‘I can’t cope with this’.”
Initially he planned to reschedule his scan for Friday, February 7, flying down that morning, but decided against it as he didn’t want to risk another cancellation.
“I wouldn’t take the chance of flying with Eastern again because my experience is that they cancel at the last minute,” Mr Simpson said, adding: “There were four of us on that flight with medical appointments at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary.”
He made arrangements to have his scan on Tuesday instead, and travelled to Aberdeen by car – a round trip of 10 hours.
Mr Simpson (62) works at Dounreay as head of profession for health, safety, quality, radiation protection and chemical safety.
“On Monday morning I received a call around 9.15 and it was Eastern Airways’ ground crew at Wick who said the flight had been cancelled,” he explained. “When I asked why, they said ‘don’t know, technical reasons, that’s what has been given to us’.
“I told them that I had this PET scan at Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and I can’t make my appointment now. My appointment was at 13.10.
“Eastern had sent me an email which was timed at 08.12 telling me the flight was cancelled and that they were going to rebook me. I don’t check my personal email account regularly – but even if I’d read the email at, say, a quarter past eight that morning, I am still not going to make that appointment.”
The email said the flight had been cancelled for “operational reasons”.
Mr Simpson explained: “I had checked in online. As far as I was concerned, everything was okay.
“They said they would rebook me on the later flight to go down that day but I said there’s no point.
“I then had to do a bit of phoning around to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary and back to the ground crew at Wick. Eventually we arrived at February 7 because there’s only two days that Eastern will do a return flight the same day, a Monday and a Friday.
“February 7 was the only day I could manage and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary could manage. Then I thought, ‘no, potentially I’ve got another metastatic cancer in my left lung and I need to know if that’s the case and I need to get it sorted out’.
“You prep yourself mentally, psychologically, for these things so I’m thinking I’m getting in the car in 10 minutes to go to Wick and then literally at the last minute the rug is ripped out from under your feet.
“It also has a huge impact on my wife, Laura – she too is affected by this. We can’t plan anything until we know if there is anything other needed by way of treatment.
“I felt really sorry for the ground crew because they’re doing a super job, it’s not their fault. I’ve since emailed Eastern Airways three times and I’ve had no response.”
Mr Simpson added: “When your flight is cancelled at that late notice, according to the ABTA website, you should be getting £220 for each flight that’s cancelled – I’m not sure how many people are aware of that. So it must be costing Eastern an absolute fortune cancelling these flights.
“I settled on that [February 7] and when I reflected on it I thought ‘no’. I got back to Aberdeen Royal Infirmary, so I drove down on Tuesday, had my appointment in the afternoon, and drove back the same day. It was a 10-hour return journey.”
Monday and Friday are now the only days on which there are both morning and early-evening flights from Wick John O’Groats Airport.
The flights are subsidised by a public service obligation (PSO) funded annually by Highland Council (£300,000) and the Scottish Government (£1 million) over three years from April 2022.
The local authority says discussions are continuing with Transport Scotland on funding until March 2026, “along with a long-term development plan for services beyond that date”.
Mr Simpson says he has been “very open” about having cancer and his message is: “Don’t die of embarrassment.”
He said: “I was diagnosed with bowel cancer in 2020. I had surgery to deal with that and I was left with a bowel stoma for about two-and-a-half years.
“I got that stoma reversed and all was going well until in January of last year when two abnormalities were detected in the lower lobe of each lung, one on the left side and one on the right.
“I had a PET scan in March last year which indicated that the abnormality on my right lung was cancerous and so I had a full lower lobectomy on the right side to remove that cancer, and it turned out that the DNA of the cancer was the same as the DNA of the cancer from the bowel.
“I knew I had an abnormality on my left side. It’s showing growth, so there is a concern that that is possibly also cancerous. That’s the reason for the PET scan.
“I have been very open about my diagnosis right from the word go, particularly the bowel cancer.
“I work at the Dounreay site and I did a piece to camera where I said, look, if you’re experiencing these things, don’t die of embarrassment – get yourself into your GP.
“So I am quite comfortable talking about it and discussing it with people. We need to be much more open.
“We’re still a nation that doesn’t like to talk about it. We should.”
Eastern Airways has been approached for comment.
