A family has been left furious after their winter sun holiday to Gran Canaria turned into a nightmare where they felt “trapped like caged animals”.
Lisa Robinson, 47, alongside her husband, John, 51 and son Jacob, 17, were set to fly to the islands at 1.45pm on December 10.
They were scheduled to depart on a Ryanair plane, but the snow and freezing cold weather made take off a bust.
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Lisa claims that the airline needed a deforesting machine to become available before they could fly – and so they were told to return for a flight on Sunday, reports MEN.
Passengers' bags were left on the plane, but the family claim they were told to leave to get a hotel room overnight.
The family travelled 40 miles and went to three different hotels before finding a hotel almost 12 hours after the family had been due to jet off, in Cranage near Holmes Chapel.
Lisa, from Sheffield, said: “We had been trapped like caged animals on the plane.
“It turned into complete chaos. We went to a Holiday Inn Express in the centre of Manchester. We were there for two hours.
“The first three passengers taken to that hotel were able to secure rooms, but we didn't.
"The manager of the hotel was phoning round, trying to liaise with Ryanair and other hotels.
“We then went to the Hilton at Old Trafford cricket ground. We were sent in taxis that only fit four people and by the time we got there again the first two passengers were able to secure rooms.
"In the taxi to Hilton I ordered a Dominos to arrive when we got there, but when we arrived we were told we were not staying there.
“We were then sat for another hour in reception before we were eventually sent to the De Vere hotel at Cranage."
They finally checked in at 1.30am and were told that there would be taxis arriving to collect them in the morning.
However, they claim they sorted their transport themselves spending £55 on top of their food and drink costs for the evening.
On Sunday, the family reportedly faced another two hour delay and then were told to urgently board the flight, with the moment captured by video.
"We were rather stinky passengers in the morning without a change of clothes," she said. "On arrival having gone through security, we sat down at the bar to find out it had been delayed by two hours.
"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.”
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