Newport family holiday becomes nightmare amid delay chaos

Sarah Cox, from Newport, had been having a “lovely holiday” with her best friend and their children in Bulgaria until they were due to return home on Bank Holiday Monday evening.

On arrival at the airport for their 23:20 flight to Cardiff, the group were among nearly 200 passengers who were told their plane had been cancelled due to an air traffic control fault.

The group were stranded at the airport for hours while they waited to find out when they would get home (Image: Sarah Cox)

Their airline TUI informed them it was unknown when they would get home and that there was nothing they could do but wait.

Ms Cox said: “This was our first holiday since Covid, and it was lovely up until this point.

“We ended up sleeping on the floor of the airport until about half two, at which point we were given a croissant and a bottle of water each, while they tried to get us all into hotels in the area overnight.”

She explained they were put on a coach with 40 other people and taken to a rundown hotel that they had been told were expecting them, only to find no TUI representatives waiting to meet them.

“The coach had already gone, so we had been abandoned, with children, in the middle of nowhere with people who didn’t speak English.

“This was at half four in the morning, so it was very scary. TUI gave no thoughts to our safety at all.”

The family were taken to another hotel at 7am, only to be told they had to check out by noon, even though they had been up for almost twenty-four hours.

Ms Cox said: “We hoped a TUI rep would turn up to tell us where we were going or when we were flying home, after what was a really stressful experience.”

They were told by a TUI rep on Tuesday morning that they were being transferred again.

Ms Cox described the rooms as “disgusting” and said a passenger had reportedly found a needle in her wardrobe.

The state of one of the hotel rooms the group were put in (Image: Sarah Cox)

“It just wasn’t to the standard we should be living in. We were told there was nothing TUI could do about it, even though we had paid for an all-inclusive, four-star holiday.

“TUI said they did not have to give us equivalent accommodation as what we had in our holiday as it was no longer a holiday.”

They eventually were put on a flight home at 1am on Thursday morning, more than 48 hours after they originally should have arrived home.

Ms Cox said while the family understood the problems, they were appalled with their treatment after TUI showed “no regards towards our safety or even basic living conditions and a lack of communication”.

TUI did not respond to a request for comment.