Family left stranded in Egypt after two week holiday having to pay £6k more due to air traffic control chaos

EasyJet has been slammed as having “no regard for people’s welfare” after a family were left stranded in Egypt following the air traffic control chaos.

The family of six, who were on a fortnight luxury holiday in Hurghada, had their flight home cancelled at the last minute with very little communication from the budget airline.

The family claimed they had to pay an extra £6,000 as they had to extend their stay at their £500-a-night accommodation, find a flight home, pay for extra airport car parking, taxi cancellation fees and pet care in England.

They also said trying to get through to easyJet from Egypt cost them £300 in phone bills.

Lee and Emma travelled to Egypt with their four children on 12 August to spend a fortnight at the popular beach resort.

Their last day was supposed to be on 28 August but the couple said that just minutes before they were due to leave their hotel for the airport they found out that their flight had been cancelled.

The family said they first learned of the issue thanks to a relative who had informed them about the travel disruption in England, prompting them to check their own flight status.

The family were initially meant to catch a flight back to Manchester Airport at 9.30pm but noticed from the flight status that their departure time had been pushed back to the following morning at 9am.

Lee and Emma noticed it had been affected again, first setting their departure at 7am and then at 1am.

Lee claimed that up until that moment easyJet had been in touch with them only through one email sent "five minutes prior to the original flight departure time to say the flight had been cancelled".

Lee told GrimsbyLive: "I rang the taxi back to say, ‘actually I need a taxi again’, but five minutes before the taxi collected us I refreshed the flight status and it came up that it had been cancelled.

"Thankfully we didn’t go to the airport - we heard rumours that there were riots kicking off at the airport because people are stranded there without any information, so we made the choice that we would stay at the hotel because we have four children.”

He added: "The hotel were absolutely fantastic and put us up for an extra night until we found out more information."

The couple said that throughout the night they tried to contact easyJet via phone and social media but had no luck.

They referred to an easyJet email they had previously received which told them they could rebook another flight home via the airline’s website.

However, the couple said they were unable to find an easyJet flight heading to Manchester Airport even when extending their search up to 10 September.

The couple said: "We finally managed to get hold of easyJet on Tuesday afternoon, and we got a very abrupt customer service representative who searched for alternative flights for us, and told us the next one into Manchester with EasyJet would be on September 12.

"We said, ‘If we accept that flight, what happens with our accommodation?’ and he basically said, ‘That’s your problem, I can only sort flights and it’s up to you to sort accommodation’. At that point we realised, we’ve got work and the kids have got school, and we don’t want to impact that. September 12 just wasn’t reasonable."

The family decided to book a flight home with Pegasus Airlines on 1 September instead which included a three-hour layover in Istanbul.

The couple want the airline to reimburse them for the extra costs but Emma said she was told by easyJet that they will “only reimburse what they deem as reasonable”.

She added: “When I asked the man on the phone what this means, he said it was accommodation that is three-star or less. Our hotel is a five-star all-inclusive resort that we booked to celebrate my 40th birthday.

"We decided to stay here because we can’t just up and leave when loads of other people are stranded and traipse the streets looking for alternative accommodation when there’s six of us."

Lee told GrimsbyLive that he wants easyJet to “reimburse us for all the money we’ve spent” and the airline has “no regard for people’s welfare."

The couple said that easyJet had now been in contact with them to "apologise" for the inconvenience caused.

An easyJet spokesperson told GrimsbyLive: "The impact of the ATC systems failure on Monday was significant, affecting tens of thousands of customers. Our teams have been working around the clock since then to help our customers as quickly as possible.

"As this is one of the busiest weeks of the year this is very challenging, however we are providing hotel accommodation where it is available and operating additional repatriation flights as well as larger aircraft on many routes.”

The spokesperson added: "While this was outside of our control, we are sorry for the difficulty this caused [the family] and we are in touch to assist them further."