MENORCA — It should go without saying: buy a ticket on an airplane and you get a seat onboard. Or do you?

For one British family who booked a flight home to Birmingham, England from Menorca, Spain with TUI Airways, having tickets and assigned seats were inconsequential. In fact, when they boarded their flight, they were shocked to find their assigned seats didn’t even exist, says a BBC report.

“We made sure we were three hours early at the airport to check in early, just to make sure we got seats together,” said Paula Taylor in a BBC interview. “We went straight to the front and we were very excited by the fact we had managed to sit together.”

But lo and behold, when Taylor and her family arrived at their supposed row, all they found was an empty space where their seats should have been.

TUI Airways, which blamed the mix-up on a “last-minute plane change”, allowed the family to sit in the crew’s jump seats in the galley during takeoff and landing. But when the crew needed the galley space during drink service, there was nowhere for Taylor and her family to sit except on the floor.

For the inconvenience, TUI Airways is refunding the family’s tickets, plus adding a £30 “goodwill gesture”, reports the BBC. The incident is also being investigated by Britain’s Civil Aviation Authority.