Snooker’s world number two Mark Allen has been reunited with his cue after hitting out at easyJet and cargo handling service Swissport for losing it on a flight hours after a major tournament win.
The Antrim man defeated Zhang Anda 10-8 in the Telford International Centre to claim the Players’ Championship trophy and with that, a career-high number two world ranking.
However, his joy appeared short-lived as easyJet lost his cue nine hours later.
It is understood that this incident occurred when Allen was flying from Belfast to Zurich, Switzerland.
He took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to tell his followers how the budget airline had lost his cue.
“9 hours after winning another ranking title and getting to a career-high number 2 in the world, easyJet and Swissport have lost my cue and both have been worse than useless at providing any information,” Allen posted.
“Nice firms.”
9 hours after winning another ranking title and getting to a career high number 2 in the world, @easyJet @swissportNews have lost my cue and both have been worse than useless at providing any information. Nice firms
— Mark Allen (@pistol147) February 26, 2024
In response to fellow snooker professional Neil Robertson suggesting he get an airtag GPS device, Allen said that he has one on his cue case, and knew where it was but that easyJet and Swissport did not.
Airtags are developed by Apple and allow users to keep track of personal belongings.
Following this incident, easyJet confirmed that the cue has been returned to the Antrim star.
“We are sorry for the delay in reuniting Mr Allen with his snooker cue which we returned to him this morning following his arrival in Belfast yesterday evening and we are looking into this with our Baggage Services partner at Belfast as this isn’t the level of service we expect for our customers,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
This incident comes soon after Irish golfer Joe Lyons was reunited with his tournament trophy today after having to leave it behind at a Ryanair desk in a Spanish airport.
He won the Spanish Senior Men’s Amateur Championship held at the Real Sevilla golf club at the weekend but when he arrived at Seville Airport for a flight home, discovered that neither he nor his wife Vera could fit the silver cup in their hand luggage.
“It wouldn’t fit in the hand luggage so it couldn’t travel. They advised they will have to put it in the bin,” he wrote on Facebook.