Airport bag snatchers ruin dream holiday

A British resident of some 30 years in Majorca should have set sail from Val Paraiso on Monday and, at this moment in time, be relaxing on a cruise of a lifetime with friends down the Argentinian coast, however she is sitting in her Palma flat waiting for either the police, insurance company or UK tour operator to phone - but even when they do, it may only to give the Briton bad news. The woman, who prefers not to be identified, is the latest victim of the bag snatchers at Palma airport. She and her two travelling friends headed to Son San Joan to catch a 3.15 pm flight to the UK, where the cruise had been booked, on Sunday. But she never got on the flight. The three were in the drop-off zone outside departures unloading their luggage, when a car pulled up and the driver started asking questions. “I put my holdall down at my feet, it was just a matter of three seconds, but suddenly it was gone - we did not even have time to see anybody in the vehicle, it was all so quick and terrible,” she said yesterday on the verge of tears. The highly professional bag snatchers, who appear to now be rotating from supermarket car parks and the airport again, fled with the woman's hand luggage containing jewellery, cash, passports, credit cards and her airline and cruise tickets. “There appears to be a complete lack of security at the airport, why are there no security cameras, then this would not happen, it has been and is such a terrible experience to go through,” she said. She contacted airport police and a report has been filed, but she was unable to catch her flight and go on her cruise “which cost several thousands of pounds.” “I'm sitting by the phone waiting for news on whether, apart from the credit cards and the passport, I'll get anything back,” she said. She also explained that because the holiday was booked in the UK, it was terribly difficult to find insurance in Majorca, “all I could find was cover of £250 per piece of luggage,” she said, admiiting that she fears the worst. Last summer the Bulletin was contacted by a string of people, tourists and residents, one of the latter even tried to catch the criminals who robbed him in a leading hyper market car park. He chased the crooks back into Palma before having to give up the pursuit, and it appears that the crafty professional gangs of car park “snatch squads” are still operating. Sunday's victim has been most upset by the ordeal and said that something has got to be done.