A young Orthodox man was left without his clothes for four days and only a T-shirt and jeans to wear for Shabbat after the airline Thomsonfly told him last Friday that their flight from Tel Aviv had run out of luggage space.

Yisroel Rothstein, 17, of north Manchester, tried to explain that the rest of his clothes were in storage while his family moved home.

“I wasn’t asking for a brand new suit but at least, if they don’t give me my luggage, they should offer a limited amount to spend on some clothes,” he said after his suitcase was delivered, ripped, on Monday afternoon.

Thomsonfly said in response: “We do not offer compensation for delays to baggage on inbound flights to the UK. We want to reassure our customers that the majority of our passengers’ baggage arrives at the same time as they do.”

Last week, after persistent rumours, Thomson finally confirmed that it was to suspend its Tel Aviv flights from London and Manchester this summer.

The airline has been flying the Tel Aviv routes since November 2007 and admits that they have been “popular”.

But it claims that now it “needs to maximise the efficiency of its fleet of aircraft and this means focusing on more traditional holiday destinations for this season. As a result the Tel Aviv routes will not feature for summer 2009.”

Nevertheless, the airline says, it is not ruling out reviving Tel Aviv as a destination for winter 2009/2010, and an announcement will be made later this year.