Cancelled flights: Children sleep on airport floors

Sarah Skellern's children spent the night sleeping on the floor of Palma de Mallorca Airport

"About three o'clock in the morning my youngest was in tears," one mother explained after spending the night trying to sleep in an airport amid the disruption caused by a UK air traffic control fault.

Sarah Skellern is one of thousands of passengers caught up in the aftermath, with many unable to return home to the UK or fly abroad for long-booked holidays. Others have told the BBC about missing weddings, seeing babies asleep in suitcases and shelling out thousands of pounds on new arrangements.

More than 1,500 flights were cancelled on Monday, according to aviation analytics company Cirium, due to the technical fault.

Mrs Skellern, from near Preston, Lancashire, described "absolute chaos" at Palma de Mallorca Airport, after waiting on an aircraft for six hours before her Jet2 flight on Monday was cancelled.

"A lot of people realised that the longer we stayed there, our chance was our crew would run out of hours, which is what actually happened in the end," the mother-of-two said.

After leaving the plane, Mrs Skellern said she and her husband Barry, and two boys Toby, 10, and Gabe, eight, were left by the airline to fend for themselves when it came to finding accommodation. A lack of local hotels meant they had little choice for a bed but the Spanish airport floor.

"As their mum I couldn't do anything about it. I think finally about three o'clock my youngest was in tears, my older one had fallen asleep on my knee," she recalled.

"We just put some towels down on the floor and went 'you know what, let's try and get some sleep'.

"They had a few hours, I had about an hour's sleep and my husband about 10 minutes at best."

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She said: "We're all exhausted". The teaching assistant eventually managed to get on a flight to Manchester Airport on Tuesday afternoon.

Jet2 said it was working incredibly hard to look after and communicate with its customers, and working tirelessly to provide customers with accommodation. The company added it was putting on extra flights on top of its scheduled programme to bring customers' home.

'Horrific'

Jayne and her friends spent the night on the floor of Ibiza airport

Jayne, who did not want her second name to be used, described her experience being stranded in Ibiza as "horrific".

The 27-year-old, who had been on the island with friends, had her Ryanair flight to Newcastle cancelled on Monday night, leaving her sleeping on the floor in the airport.

"Yesterday, hundreds of people have been left to fend for themselves in Ibiza airport and sleeping on the floor anywhere they can find space," she said.

"The floor was freezing, we were using beach towels as blankets and trying to make a pillow out of anything. There were loads of young girls and boys everywhere trying to make the best situation out of it."

The group spent a total of £2,000 on their flights to Holland, where they will pay to stay overnight before catching a ferry back to the north of England on Wednesday afternoon.

"I know again it wasn't their [Ryanair's] fault but I think they should have provisions in place. The staff should be trained to give advice and stuff like that,"she added.

Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary called the Nats fault "unacceptable".

'We could miss our wedding'

The couple need to register their marriage this week to legally wed on Saturday

Adam Ashall-Kelly and Christine Marriott fear they could miss their wedding in Italy, after their flight from Manchester to Verona was cancelled on Monday.

The bride and groom-to-be are now frantically trying to find a way to get to a local court in Malcesine, near Lake Garda, before they can be legally wed on Saturday.

The couple, both originally from Manchester, have booked a new flight to Milan on Wednesday but have "no idea" whether it will go ahead or be cancelled.

"It's incredibly stressful," Mr Ashall-Kelly, 35, said.

"We've looked at whether we can get a flight to Paris and then a train, but there's strikes. We've looked at driving all the way there and we're thinking about maybe getting the Eurostar to Brussels and then there's a 14-hour bus."

The finance management consultant said 45 wedding guests were in a similar situation and were arranging new flights at different airports across the UK.

He said: "Some people are meant to be flying today and they're waiting to find out, some people are meant to be flying on Thursday, but they don't know what the impact of all this will be.

"Everybody is completely on edge."

'Unbearable'

Holly Baker and her family were offered a flight home in a week's time

Holly Baker and her family had been due to fly from Palma, Majorca, when their flight was cancelled on Monday.

"It was unbearable last night. I was really stressed and upset, and in front of the children, which I didn't like. We weren't getting any information," the mother-of-two from near Brighton said.

"EasyJet just left us to it really. They said we could get flights but not until next Tuesday.

"My daughter starts her very first day at high school on Monday. We felt we had to get home."

Faced with not being able to catch another EasyJet flight until next Tuesday, the couple decided to get an overnight ferry to Toulon in south-eastern France.

From there they plan to take three trains to Dieppe in the north of France, before travelling to the UK.

"We keep reading that we might not even get compensation," she added. "We've paid out £1,000 now, just to try and get back home."

'Babies sleeping in suitcases'

Dan Mayberry said people slept in wheelchairs, not knowing emergency beds were laid out

Dan Mayberry described seeing babies sleeping in suitcases, after his EasyJet flight departing Tenerife for London was cancelled on Monday.

"There have been babies put in suitcases as makeshift beds, people on the floor, people sleeping in wheelchairs," he said.

"The airport themselves put out emergency beds and they weren't announced to anyone, it was just if you were on that end of the airport."

The teacher said because there were no EasyJet flights to the UK before Monday next week, he and his girlfriend had to pay out £2,000 in new flights and accommodation in order to get back to work.

The pair are planning to fly to Paris, and get to the UK from there.

EasyJet said it had limited free space on direct flights. It added that customers who make their own travel arrangements will be reimbursed.

The airline said it would try to add capacity by flying larger aircraft and operating additional flights to repatriate customers where options were most limited.

Additional reporting by Sherie Ryder, Daniel O'Donoghue, Kris Bramwell & Osob Elmi