A family's dream holiday to Disneyland was ruined after Easyjet axed their flights and left them stranded on the floor of an airport.
Rachel Allan and her husband Greig, both 31, from Fife, had forked out more than £1800 to take their two children Joshua, 7, and Evah, 6, to Disneyland Paris on Friday, March 10. The family's four-day break was also a surprise for Evah's birthday.
But the night before they were due to fly from Edinburgh Airport to Charles de Gaulle, mum Rachel noticed their Easyjet flight had been cancelled due to the French air traffic control strike on the airline's app, reports the Record.
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The family, from Glenrothes, then contacted Easyjet after receiving no notice of the cancellation and were offered a flight to Bristol with a connecting journey to Paris on Saturday morning.
However, just minutes after landing in Bristol, the family-of-four was told that their connecting flight would also no longer be going ahead.
Mum Rachel said her two tearful children were forced to sit on the floor of the airport for several hours as she and her husband desperately searched for alternative flights to get to Paris.
She told the Record: "We told the kids they were going to Disneyland on Thursday night and filmed their reaction for a nice memory. It was a surprise for my daughter's birthday and she was ecstatic.
"But when the second flight was cancelled we were all left heartbroken. The children thought they were going to have fun at Disney but instead, they had to sit on the floor of Bristol Airport.
"There weren't even chairs because we couldn't get through departures and all they had to eat was a Burger King. My daughter's birthday was destroyed.
"My issue isn't the money we spent, it's the kid's having their holiday taken away from them."
The family checked into a hotel overnight in Bristol in the hope of being able to travel to Paris on Sunday. But Easyjet offered the family a flight on Monday, while refusing to change their return trip on Tuesday - leaving them with only 1 day in Paris.
Despite spending almost £2k on accommodation and tickets for Disney, Rachel and Greig were forced to take their kids back home.
The couple were left to fork out a further £312 for the journey back to Scotland. Since returning home, Easyjet has agreed to refund the couple for their flights to Bristol and back, and their overnight hotel stay.
Disney has since been in touch with the Allan's and offered to look into moving their stay to a later date.
Rachel added: "There is a bit of hope with Disney. They didn't do anything wrong - they were open and made it clear that it wasn't their fault we couldn't be there.
"But someone from the Disney team offered to try and see if they could change the dates for us. We don't expect them to give us a refund but a change of date would be ideal."
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A spokesperson for Easyjet said: “Due to French national strike action airlines were requested by the French authorities to make some cancellations to their flying programmes which meant the Allan family’s flight from Edinburgh to Paris was unfortunately unable to operate.
“We notified customers in advance with their options of a free transfer or a refund to help them rebook, however due to the strike action impacting all airlines the flight from Bristol to Paris was also unable to operate.
“The safety and wellbeing of our customers and crew is easyJet’s highest priority. We understand the difficulty this will have caused and we have been in touch with the family to apologise for their experience, reimburse them for their expenses and provide the compensation they are due.”
Disney has been contacted for comment.
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