A MUM and her three kids are among dozens of passengers stranded for more than 22 hours in a Moroccan airport after their flight was cancelled due to the CrowdStrike outage.
Anne Lowe, 43,and her 14, 10 and seven-year-old children were left to sleep on the floor while trying to return to the UK from Marrakech after package holiday firm TUI failed to find them a hotel.
A mother and her three children were among dozens of passengers left stranded for over 22 hours at a Moroccan airport due to a major travel disruption caused by a technical failure at UK air traffic control. The chaos resulted in numerous flight cancellations, forcing families to sleep on the airport floor, with some children using opened suitcases as makeshift beds.
Witnesses described heartbreaking scenes of young children trying to rest on cold floors, with parents expressing frustration over the lack of support and information from airline staff. One mother recounted her youngest child in tears after a long night without proper accommodations.
The incident has raised concerns about the treatment of passengers during travel disruptions, prompting calls for airlines to improve their response and provide adequate support for families in distress. As the situation continues to unfold, many affected families are left scrambling for alternative travel arrangements while coping with the exhaustion of an unexpected airport stay.
More than 5,000 flights have been grounded after the computer meltdown which impacted major carriers, including Ryanair, Delta Airlines, Air India and Qantas.
Huge queues snaked through airports in Edinburgh and across Europe.
A TUI spokesman said: "Due to the global IT issue at airports and airlines around the world yesterday, TUI’s overall service level was heavily impacted and we would like to apologise to everyone affected.
"Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, an essential system needed to run our airline operation remained unstable late into last night.
"We therefore made the difficult decision to cancel a number of outbound flights and delayed a number of inbound flights returning to the UK.
"We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure.
"We would like to reassure customers due to return home from their holiday that we are working on their new flight times and we will be in contact directly with further details.
"We also ask that all TUI customers due to travel this weekend regularly check the TUI website for updates.
