Family's £5k holiday ends with kids sleeping on airport floor due to travel woes

30 August 2023 , 08:49

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Julie Shaw's grandchildren had to sleep on the airport floor (Image: Stoke Sentinel)

A family's dream holiday costing £5,000 ended in disaster as children were left sleeping on an airport floor due to air traffic control chaos.

Julie Shaw has publicly criticised TUI for its handling of the travel disruption which resulted in her grandchildren being forced to sleep on the cold, hard floor of an airport. Julie, her husband Joe, and their two young granddaughters, aged eight and six, had enjoyed a week-long holiday in sunny Turkey. However, their idyllic getaway quickly turned into a nightmare when they encountered difficulties returning home to Scholar Green, Cheshire.

Passengers were banned from leaving Dalaman airport (Stoke Sentinel)

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The family was scheduled to fly on TOM715 at 1.40pm on Bank Holiday Monday. Unfortunately, a significant UK air traffic control failure necessitated manual input of flight plans by controllers, causing severe delays.

This technical glitch led to an agonising near 24-hour delay, during which time the young children attempted to sleep on the airport floor as they were initially prohibited from leaving the premises.

While Julie acknowledges that the air traffic control issues were beyond anyone's control, she firmly believes that TUI's management of the situation was subpar. The family finally boarded a plane on Tuesday (August 29) around lunchtime.

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A distressed Julie, 59, recounted: "We spent 23 hours at Dalaman Airport. There was no hotel and no reps to help. Dalaman was a nightmare. Apparently the cabin crew knew we weren't going fly on 29, Aug 2023."

In a shocking turn of events, holidaymakers were left stranded and out of pocket due to severe flight disruptions. The Turks, however, failed to provide any information for 24 hours. Promises of hotel accommodations fell flat as passengers were not allowed to leave the airport until 4am. By then, it was too late for many who were scheduled to depart at 10.15am but eventually took off at noon. Many managed to catch some sleep on the airport floor.

The issue wasn't just the technological mishap, but the treatment of the passengers that sparked outrage. Children were left hungry and thirsty, with a meal for four at McDonald's costing an exorbitant £50. Some passengers, without extra money, were in dire need of essentials like nappies and milk. Compensation claims and complaints about the treatment are expected to follow.

Julie, one of the affected passengers, estimates they have been left £150 out of pocket. TUI, in a message sent to the stranded family, apologised for the delay to their flight TOM715 from Dalaman to Manchester, citing Air Traffic Control outages in the UK as the cause of the disruption. They made the difficult decision to reschedule the flight to depart on August 29.

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) restrictions have affected numerous holidaymakers across the UK and abroad. According to aviation analytics firm, Cirium, by the afternoon, 232 flights departing UK airports had been cancelled and 271 arriving flights. The travel disruption could last for days with schedules remaining significantly disrupted.

In a recent statement to the BBC, a spokesperson for NATS confirmed that an issue affecting their "ability to automatically process flight plans" has been successfully resolved. The spokesperson further added, "Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system's performance as we return to normal operations." The glitch had impacted the system's capacity to auto-process flight plans, necessitating manual processing which inevitably led to traffic flow restrictions due to lower processing volume.

Travel company TUI also took to X, formerly known as Twitter, to address those affected by the delays. They assured customers who had booked through them that they have the option to either amend their holiday or cancel it altogether if they no longer wished to travel.

* This article was crafted with the help of an AI tool, which speeds up The Mirror's editorial research. An editor reviewed this content before it was published. You can report any errors to [email protected]

Hayley Parker