Like most UMD students, Joshua Tomaic just wanted to visit home during his summer break. The Canary Islands native and Maryland basketball forward flew to Spain two weeks ago on United Airlines, but ran into some lengthy passport trouble at the airport en route to the archipelago. Maryland men’s basketball assistant coach Dustin Clark had some choice words for United on Twitter.
Disappointed/disgusted with @united airlines.
— Dustin Clark (@CoachClarkHoops) May 29, 2017
According to Clark’s thread, a United employee dropped Tomaic’s passport and ran it over with the wheel of a chair when the sophomore tried to leave Washington for Spain. Tomaic was eventually allowed to leave, but later got stuck when he was trying to come back to the states on Monday.
Fast forward to today @JTTomaic arrives at 4am to Madrid airport to fly back to Washington. DC for summer school & he is denied check in.. — Dustin Clark (@CoachClarkHoops) May 29, 2017
By one of @united partners due to the passport page being “crumpled”. So @JTTomaic missed his flight. Only to later be told by @united…
— Dustin Clark (@CoachClarkHoops) May 29, 2017
That his passport is actually ok to travel on. But now he is stuck in Madrid because @united is trying to make him purchase a new $2k ticket — Dustin Clark (@CoachClarkHoops) May 29, 2017
Although Tomaic did not tweet about his long wait in the Madrid airport, he left some clues on his Instagram story.
A few hours later:
Even more hours later:
Clark was on the phone with United for more than an hour trying to make sense of the situation, but Tomaic is finally back in the good ol’ US-of-A.
We’d be pretty peeved too, Dustin and Joshua.
