A family ended up waiting in a hotel lobby for a pizza delivery instead of sunning themselves in Gran Canaria.
The Robinsons were driven 40 miles to three different hotels looking for somewhere to stay in the middle of the night after being 'trapped like caged animals' for five hours on a flight that was too frozen to leave Manchester Airport, they claim.
They had been among Ryanair passengers set for a spell of winter sunshine on the Canary Islands due to jet off at 1.45pm on Saturday (December 10), Manchester Evening News reported.
When the cold snap and snow hit the airport and closed runways earlier in the day, passengers were told the plane needed defrosting.
Lisa Robinson, 47, said that passengers had been told Ryanair needed a defrosting machine to become available, before eventually the airline urged them to come back for the flight on Sunday instead.
Along with husband John, 51, and son Jacob, 17, Lisa was told to get off the plane some hours later before being informed that their bags would be staying onboard, the would-be holidaymaker claimed.
What followed was an entire night of travelling through Manchester and Cheshire to get a hotel room - before finally securing one almost 12 hours after the family had been due to jet off.
"We had been trapped like caged animals on the plane," Lisa, from Sheffield, said. "It turned into complete chaos."
This included waiting for two hours for a room at the first hotel in Manchester, before realising they wouldn't get a space, and then heading to a different hotel in taxis, but again arriving too late to find the rooms had already filled up with other passengers.
The family had headed to the Hilton at Old Trafford, and ordered a Dominos for when they arrived, but found they could not get a room, and say they ended up waiting for an hour in reception before heading to a different hotel.
The family finally checked in at the hotel at 1.30am, where Lisa says she was told Ryanair had arranged for taxis to take them back to the airport in the morning.
She claims the family ended up arranging their own taxi with other passengers at the airport instead - costing £55.
Passengers were still to be reunited with their luggage on the Sunday when they were told of a two-hour delay, Lisa claims.
She said the group was then told to urgently board the flight, meaning they can to abandon their drinks.
"On arrival having gone through security, we sat down at the bar to find out it had been delayed by two hours," Lisa recalled.
"We were supposed to fly at 12pm but I got up at 11.40am to get a drink, paid for it, and the screen suddenly said 'final call' to board the flight. We had to abandon the drinks and go to the gate.
"We stood there for 30 minutes to then be told it was delayed for at least two hours because Ryanair was frantically searching for staff to man the plane, to take us to Gran Canaria."
The flight finally took off at 3pm, with Lisa describing the episode as an 'absolute s***show'.
A spokesperson for Ryanair said: “Due to adverse weather conditions in the UK, we have experienced a small number of delays/cancellations to our flights to/from the UK, including this flight from Manchester to Gran Canaria (December 10).
"Affected passengers were provided with overnight accommodation and passengers can claim any receipted and reasonable out of pocket expanses on Ryanair.com
"As adverse weather continues across the UK and Ireland, our teams are working hard to minimise disruption to customers and Ryanair advises all customers flying to/from Ireland and UK today (Tuesday, December 13) to check the Ryanair website/app for flight status updates before travelling to the airport. We sincerely apologise for these weather-related disruptions which are beyond our control.”
