A Gloucester travel agency has tracked down a former star of popular TV show Airline via social media in a bid to raise awareness of the need for more help for passengers affected by cancelled flights.
Resfeber Travel launched a “Where is Jane Boulton?” campaign on its own Facebook page and on other trade social media sites to see if it could find the ex-easyJet employee who was known as a no-nonsense check-in trouble-shooter.
Boulton appeared alongside supervisor Leo Jones and check-in assistant Katrina Leeder on the TV show, which ran from 1998 to 2006 and followed the airline’s employees around the country, highlighting a variety of dramas from missed flights and cancellations to health problems and police incidents.
Boulton got in touch with the agency the day after the post appeared but is no longer working in the sector.
Resfeber Travel owner Arron Mitchell said the company “needed more Jane Boultons” in the industry to deal with the current crisis at UK airports, with hundreds of flight cancellations affecting agents’ clients over the half-term holiday.
He said: “If customers missed flights or flights were cancelled Jane sorted it out; there was no messing about, and telling people to go on the app or to contact the airline themselves. She was so well known in the 90s. This is what people are calling for now to come back, we need people like her.”
Boulton responded to Mitchell’s post to say: “I am here.”
“We had a bit of banter but she now runs her own business,” added Mitchell.
Mitchell said his local airport, Bristol, no longer had an easyJet customer service desk and was told by check-in staff they were unable to help him when his own easyJet flight was cancelled recently.