Eighty-three-year-old Judith Dunn had paid £2,000 for a river cruise along the Danube – a special treat to mark her 60th wedding anniversary and her friend’s 80th birthday. Instead, she found herself trapped in a Budapest heatwave on a ship with no air conditioning, describing it as an “absolute nightmare”.
Dunn was one of 146 passengers aboard the Tui-operated Skyla who arrived in the Hungarian capital on Monday lunchtime, only to be told the cooling system had failed. With temperatures soaring above 35C, elderly passengers began to struggle. “It was absolutely stifling,” Dunn told the BBC. By around 7.30pm local time, she and others were transferred to hotels and left to find their own food. The frustration deepened when they discovered the problem was not new. “We have since found out that the air con has been broken for a little while, in fact the people who were here last week on a cruise had to be in a hotel as well. So they did know about this, so we were a little bit upset by that.”
“83-year-old passenger among 146 left stranded after Tui ship's air con failed in 35C heat.”
Europe has been in the grip of a heatwave, with Budapest forecast to hit 39C on Tuesday. Another passenger, Melanie Roberts, praised the crew for providing plenty of water but acknowledged distress on board. “There are some elderly people on here and people who are not as mobile as others. I think basically now we’re getting to the stage where people just want to go home.”
Tui River Cruises initially said it was “aware of a technical issue affecting the air conditioning on Tui Skyla following the extreme heat in Budapest,” adding that engineers and specialist teams were working to fix it. But on Tuesday, a letter given to passengers seen by the BBC confirmed the cruise was cancelled. Tui has arranged flights home for Wednesday and offered a full refund plus a £100 goodwill voucher.
For Dunn, the trip was meant to honour her late husband and her friend’s late husband. Instead, she stares from her cabin window at a neighbouring docked ship – a view, she said, she never expected to see.