Two teachers and their children have been left stranded abroad after their flight home from holiday was cancelled, and the train they booked in a bid to get home was also scrapped. Naomi Thomas, 33, and Danny Massey, 39, had been on their first holiday in five years and were due to fly home from Faro, Portugal, with their children.
But easyJet scrapped their flight and they were left stranded at the Faro airport - even though the plane flew back to the UK 30 minutes later under a different flight number. The holidaymakers were told there would not be another flight home for days so they hastily booked a flight to Paris and train tickets on Eurostar - but when they got to France the train was also cancelled.
"I am a teacher, my partner works in a secondary school, and my stepdaughter was due to leave our home for a school trip to Normandy, France at 1am on Monday," Naomi told The Mirror.
"It was imperative we got back quickly. The treatment from easyJet has been non existent. No refreshments. No offers of accommodation. Just a printed leaflet of the emails they sent at midnight, while the instructions to manage your booking on the app still are not working almost 27 hours later.
"As for any phone numbers - these don’t exist during the middle of the night when you’re alone in a cold airport.
"I will certainly be refraining from using easyJet in the future and will probably stick to caravan holidays in the UK."
The children were left to sleep on airport seats (Image: Naomi Thomas)
The family's trip back home began at 8pm on Saturday when they arrived at Faro Airport in Portugal, three and a half hours ahead of their flight. They checked in and entered the departure lounge and later went through their boarding gate and walked into the tunnel, standing metres away from the plane's open door.
"Here, two very overwhelmed employees attempted to apologise and explained that a crew member had been taken ill and they were awaiting a paramedic," Naomi said.
"Heart attacks were mentioned, as was the possibility of downgrading staff and the number of passengers, but nothing concrete.
"After 15 minutes or so, the same employee from the boarding gate announced our flight was cancelled, and that we should follow him to retrieve our bags, and check the app for the reason why - 26 hours later we still have no reason why."
Naomi kept checking her app only to be told their flight was not suffering from disruption, leaving the family to tuck into vending machine food and sleep in the airport until 6am - when a hastily booked flight to Paris was due to leave.
"Our decision was made good by the easyJet employee arriving on shift at 4am announcing that there would be no available flights to the UK before Wednesday," Naomi said.
"Luckily we were able to book Eurostar train tickets, and a connecting train to our home town from London St Pancras. We also arranged for family to collect our car that was parked at Liverpool airport."
The family got to Paris and jumped in a taxi to Gare du Nord a few hours early, only to be told that their train was cancelled and they should rebook.
The next available service was on Tuesday.
"After some tears, emotional phone calls and disbelief that we were in the same position we started in, but in a different country, we finally admitted defeat and retreated here, to this apartment so that we could rest and work out what to do," the mum continued.
"There are no direct flights from Paris to the UK today or tomorrow. No trains. We can’t get the ferry as they no longer accept foot passengers.
"We can’t find a car hire company that will allow us to hire in France and return in England, that’s assuming they’d accept a photograph of the driving licenses we left at home in the UK.
"We’ve rung the schools we work in to say we won’t be there tomorrow. We’ve broken our daughter's heart by telling her she won’t make her school trip that she’d so been looking forward to.
"I tried to book the earliest direct flight to Manchester I could on Tuesday AM, but as I got to the payment page, the flights were gone."
Now the family are stuck in Paris until Tuesday evening, when they hope a Eurostar train they're booked onto will actually take them home.
EasyJet and Eurostar have been contacted for comment.
