A mother has spoken of her ‘nightmare’ experience with easyJet after her flight to Tenerife was cancelled first at Manchester and then at Gatwick – leading to her family being forced to sleep on an airport floor, and treated like ‘animals’.
Nicola Caine, 37, from Cheshire, was due to fly from Manchester Airport to Tenerife on Monday in a group of 13 with her husband, children and several family members.
The group had booked a package holiday with easyJet to celebrate Ms Caine’s parents’ 40th wedding anniversary and their 60th birthdays.
They were booked on the EZY1903 easyJet flight to Tenerife South for a seven-day holiday, which cost around £2,500.
Nicola Caine (left), 37, from Cheshire, was due to fly from Manchester Airport to Tenerife on Monday in a group of 13 with her husband, children and several family members. They were booked on the EZY1903 easyJet flight to Tenerife South for a seven-day holiday, which cost around £2,500
After their Manchester flight was cancelled, they had to go on a five-hour coach journey to Gatwick to catch another flight to Tenerife. When that was also cancelled, they were told to go to another gate and look at new flights on the easyJet app. Above, exhausted family members on the floor at Gatwick
With no accommodation to stay in and no food, Ms Caine and her family – including her 12-year-old autistic son – resorted to sleeping wherever they could find space
Ms Caine described how the experience was ‘one problem after another’, which was traumatising for her family, especially her 12-year-old son, who is autistic.
Her ordeal comes as airports in the UK are still trying to recover from Covid restrictions and are struggling to hire enough staff to meet surging demand while Britain faces a tight labour market with more vacancies than job-seekers.
After Ms Caine’s family group boarded their plane, the passengers waited over an hour due to baggage issues, only to be told that the flight was cancelled.
The mother-of-two, who is married to Dave, said: ‘We were sat on the plane for an hour and a half. A pilot came and said “unfortunately, due to staff going over their hours, we are going to have to cancel this flight”.
‘The reaction on the plane wasn’t good at all. My son broke down in tears and screamed the plane down.
‘Then we were told we couldn’t get off because an Emirates plane had just arrived, and they take priority. So we sat on the plane for another 30 minutes.
‘Luckily, the staff on the plane were really good – they let us go to the front of the plane to calm my son down.’
When they disembarked and arrived back in the terminal, Ms Caine said the passengers were not greeted by easyJet staff. Instead, Manchester Airport staff advised passengers to download the flight company’s app to rebook new flights.
But there were more issues with the easyJet app, Ms Caine claimed.
‘It was an absolute nightmare – it was freezing cold,’ said Ms Caine. ‘My husband and I had to lie on the floor. EasyJet didn’t even provide food vouchers. The children were tired and upset. You wouldn’t even treat animals the way we have been treated’
She continued: ‘Everyone was trying to get on the app, but it was crashing. No-one could get on it at all.
‘The app didn’t work because we were on a package holiday. While we were stood there, two cancelled easyJet flights came through from Turkey and Egypt.
‘So we were left, all these people from three flights, not knowing what would happen. Luckily, we live 30 minutes from the airport, so we decided to come home.
‘We didn’t know whether to unpack because we didn’t know whether we would be going on holiday or not.’
At 5:30am, Nicola received a text, telling her to be at Manchester Airport for 10:30am, where a coach would take them to Gatwick Airport to catch a flight to Tenerife at 7:10pm that evening.
‘We were absolutely devastated,’ she said. ‘We had not slept all night because my son was crying.
Huge lines of passengers were seen…
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