British holidaymakers were left stranded on the Greek island of Corfu for an entire weekend after their Tui flight to Manchester was cancelled amid the global IT outage.
The flight was due to depart at 2.20pm on Friday but passengers said they were still waiting at the airport late Sunday afternoon, some 50 hours later.
Passengers told Manchester Evening News they were instructed to book their own hotels for two nights amid the chaos, while others spent the entire weekend at the airport.
One said: “It was horrendous, there were people everywhere. Some had to stand outside in 35C heat because the airport was so busy. Everyone was queuing because the flights were all delayed.
“Eventually we got an email saying the flight was cancelled completely and that accommodation was being arranged, but when we got to the Tui desk, they told us they couldn't find us a hotel because there were so many guests and the island was at capacity, and that we had to sort it ourselves.
“Everyone is just miserable and angry. It has been a nightmare.”
Another passenger wrote on X, formerly Twitter, on Sunday: “Still stuck in Corfu after Friday's TOM2519 to Manchester was cancelled. Promised a 12pm flight home after two days of hell.
“Now we are sitting in departures and the flight has been delayed: no new departure time. After 48hrs of tui's abhorrent treatment we need information.”
@TUI telling stranded Brits there are no UK flights out of Corfu due to yesterday's IT outage. Here are plenty of other airlines managing to get their passengers home! @BBCNews @SkyNews pic.twitter.com/sh56B1uq4u
— Shay Sweeney 🇺🇦 (@ShaySweeney1962) July 20, 2024
A rescheduled flight was due to leave Corfu at 5.25pm on Sunday, Manchester Evening News reported, 51 hours later than the original departure time.
Tui customers in Rhodes that were booked on a Manchester-bound plane also reported that their flight was cancelled, along with passengers hoping to fly from Corfu to Belfast on Friday.
On X passengers complained about “really poor” communication from Tui, with some saying they were forced to book alternative flights.
Thousands of flights were cancelled worldwide after an update to CrowdStrike cybersecurity software caused a widespread IT outage on Friday.
In a statement on Sunday, Tui said: “Following the global IT issue impacting businesses around the world, we would like to apologise to everyone affected.
“Whilst the original it issue was outside of our control, the impact to our systems has meant that our flight programming continues to suffer delays and cancellations.
“We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this is.”
The airline said impacted customers would be contacted directly.
Global banks, airlines, hospitals and government offices were disrupted by the IT outage.
Some 207 flights, equating to 6.7 per cent of all scheduled UK departures, were axed on Friday, with others delayed, while 201 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said 6,855 flights, or 6.2 per cent of all those scheduled, were cancelled globally on Friday.
CrowdStrike released information to fix affected systems, but experts said getting them back online would take time as it required manually weeding out the flawed code.
Problems came to light quickly after the update was rolled out on Friday, and users posted pictures on social media of computers with blue screens displaying error messages.
The London Ambulance Service said their call volumes were up 60 per cent on Saturday compared with the same day last year.
The service received 6,849 calls to 999 on Saturday compared to 4,270 calls on Saturday July 22, 2023.
Meanwhile the NHS warned of “continued disruption” to GP services after Microsoft revealed 8.5 million Windows devices were hit.
Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records as their EMIS appointment and patient record system went down.
The global impact of this outage reflects CrowdStrike's dominance.
Over half of Fortune 500 companies and many government bodies such as the top US cybersecurity agency itself use the company's software.
