A QUINGO AIR NAMED “NELLIE” ON HOLIDAY IN MADEIRA

Great review & advice from Canon E W Cox on travelling with your Quingo. Thank you for sending this to us.

My wife and I have just returned from holiday in Madeira (our 38th visit!) having had the advantage of our new QUINGO Air for the first time. 

I have just downloaded photographs on to my computer and it seemed a good opportunity to share with you some of them with you that may or may not be of interest for publicity or otherwise, but also give me the opportunity to make some comments.

Let me say first that ‘Nellie’ (as I shall refer to Quingo Air in future!) behaved very well, and that the terrain in Madeira give her a tougher ‘workout’ than she might have expected! The surface you see on the photographs is relatively smooth; most road surfaces in the area where we stay are cobbled, sometimes large cobbles but mostly of large pebble size set in concrete, and these certainly tested the construction of the scooter. 

Not surprisingly any significant gradients proved to be testing, and so was stability where camber on pavements caused concern at times to the extent that I wondered where my centre of gravity was!   But there were no mishaps, and most modest kerbs proved to be negotiable.

Transport by car to airport was good, as expected, and the Jet2 Airline staff at Manchester airport were extremely helpful: all details of the scooter had been submitted when we booked and were adequate. 

I was able to drive to the departure gate where ‘Nellie’ was removed and placed in the aircraft hold, apparently without the necessity to dismantle her in any way, although I cannot confirm this. 

On arrival at Funchal she was actually waiting for me in the scissor-type vehicle used to cater for wheelchair passengers when accessing the aircraft via the starboard door, and I was therefore lowered to ground level and able to drive immediately through the terminal to taxi with no problems.

The return from Funchal to Manchester was slightly more eventful in so far as Nellie was placed in the hold at the gate and returned to to me at Manchester in the carousel area.

This was where there was a moment or two of excitement!  Having inserted the key…nothing!  No power or sign of power!  No sign of damage or movement of batteries etc, and no mention that there had been a problem. 

However, we subsequently discovered that the batteries obviously HAD been removed at Funchal and our problem created there by the covering of all electrical contacts on the batteries with brown sticky tape (such as is used for packing parcels etc) before reinserting them into their normal positions: this was not visible from an external view. 

To the best of my knowledge no such action had been taken at Manchester for the outward journey to Madeira.

It is for this reason really that I thought I would send this letter so that other purchasers and users could be made aware of the practice should they experience a similar problem if it arises. 

I did not, incidentally, take either the arm rests or front basket on this trip: they seemed a bit superfluous in the circumstances.

Apologies for taking up rather a lot of time and space, but I have tried to be as comprehensive in my description as possible to enable you to visualise what I have been try to explain!!

With best wishes

E W Cox (Canon) Baschurch, Shropshire