British family 'stranded' on holiday after flight home ended so staff could rest

A mother and her two children were left stranded in Cyprus for over a day after their flight was delayed by nearly seven hours before ultimately being cancelled.

Sophie Hughes, from Merseyside, recounted how her family's journey home from Larnaca to Manchester Airport began with a three-hour delay as they arrived at the airport around 9pm on Friday, August 22.

Their flight was initially scheduled for 12.25am on Saturday, August 23, but when they boarded the TUI plane at 3.30am, they were informed of a further delay. They then sat on the tarmac for another three hours and 45 minutes, according to Sophie.

TUI explained that the delays were due to ground equipment being stuck at the back of the plane, and despite the crew's best efforts, it could not be resolved before the onboard staff would have exceeded the maximum number of legally worked hours if they were to have flown back to the UK.

Sophie was told that the crew needed 12 hours of rest before they could fly again.

This resulted in approximately 300 passengers disembarking at around 7.15am local time, with Sophie alleging they were told a TUI representative would be waiting for them in the airport, the Liverpool Echo reports.

However, Sophie claimed they exited the plane only to find that the TUI staff member had been unable to reach the gate, leaving them waiting for what she described as hours until a Swissport representative arrived to announce there were 90 hotel rooms available for people in various hotels.

Sophie, 37, along with her 12 year old son and 15 year old daughter, seized the opportunity to retrieve medication for her daughter's chronic pain condition from their stored luggage. Speaking to the ECHO, she revealed: "My son has autism and my daughter has a chronic pain condition, they think it's linked to covid. She needs access to anti-nausea medication and pain medication."

She added: "Not only that, it's stress induced, her symptoms are heightened in stressful circumstances, so she was in agony when we got back.

"My son has said he doesn't want to go on a plane again because he was just scared. We didn't really know what was happening and we didn't know whether the flight was ever gonna go. We felt stranded.

"Everyone was kicking off in the airport, we were all just out of our minds."

Sophie managed to secure a room for her family around 11am but had to fork out €100 for a taxi to the hotel, which she described as being "in the middle of nowhere".

Upon returning to the airport on Saturday evening, they discovered people had been forced to sleep on the airport floor after failing to claim one of the available hotel rooms.

She recounted: "We were left in the hotel with no indication of when the next flight was. We were told 4 o'clock in the afternoon and then seven o'clock in the evening and the flight ended up being 26 hours later at 2 o'clock in the morning.

"The people who didn't have a hotel spent the entire time in the airport, there were children sleeping on the floor with no access to their luggage."

Photographs obtained by the ECHO reveal numerous passengers queueing throughout the airport and individuals lying on the terminal floor.

Images shared with the Manchester Evening News at the time also depict young children sleeping on cardboard and paper bags across the harsh terminal flooring.

A Facebook group has subsequently been established for those impacted by the disruptions, titled "TUI disaster 23/08". At the time of writing it had 67 members.

Sophie, her children and the remaining passengers were eventually permitted to board their aircraft and return to Manchester at approximately 2am on Sunday, August 24.