Transavia shocks distraught widower

Dutch airline Transavia has gone through the ringer over an insensitive reaction to a recent widower who tried to cancel tickets upon the loss of his wife. Attempting to cancel some tickets, the widower was asked if he didn't have anyone else to go with. The couple wanted to go to Torremolinos together, but his wife died very suddenly and unexpectedly, het Parool reports. The widower's friend, Nieko Slobbe, said "last week was the funeral, and last Monday my friend got to work to arrange all sorts of business around the death of his wife." The widower also needed to make a phone call to Transavia. A simple matter of canceling the trip to Málaga, because his wife passed away. His ears are still ringing with what their response was. "Can't you go with somebody else?" the call center employee asked. The reaction knocked the wind out of the recent widower. "How can you say something so heartless to someone?" best friend Nieko says on behalf of the widower, who was too distraught to say anything himself. "It was doubtless an unexperienced staff member. But still...you can think about what you're saying." Nieko follows that his friend wasn't concerned about getting the money back for the tickets. "He just didn't want to go anymore, and they they ask something like this." Nieko, from Wormen, decided to take matters into his own hands and stand up for his friend on Twitter. Within a few hours, the message had made its rounds. Wednesday morning, Transavia took the time to react. They called to apologize. "They admitted that it was a stupid mistake and that it won't happen again." A spokesperson for Transavia told het Parool that "mistakes get made sometimes." "We can't retrieve what exactly was said. But it wasn't good. What should have been said was that we could have cancelled the ticket or booked a different trip." "My friend is feeling better about it now" Nieko Slobbe said. "Because he is being taken seriously and he has been heard. But it remains deeply, deeply stupid of Transavia."