A family were in tears after travel chaos caused them to miss their flight home.
Naomi Thomas, 33, and Danny Massey, 39, were due to fly back to L iverpool John Lennon Airport from Faro in Portugal on Sunday when their flight was cancelled.
The two teachers and their teenage children - one of whom is missing a big school trip - forked out hundreds of pounds in a bid to get home in time for school, only to end up stuck in the French capital when their hastily booked Eurostar was cancelled due to an electrical fault, the Mirror Online reports.
They are among a huge number of Brits stuck abroad following the end of half-term, leaving them to explain the situation to frustrated bosses and teachers trying to keep work places and classrooms running smoothly.
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Although different councils have different rules - and headteachers may well be understanding - parents can be slapped with a £60 fine each for non-sickness related absences, such as being on holiday during term-time. Employees are also at the whims of their bosses, who may insist extra annual leave is used up to cover the unplanned time off.
Naomi said: "I am a teacher, my partner works in a secondary school, and my step daughter was due to leave our home for a school trip to Normandy, France at 1am on Monday. It was imperative we got back quickly. The treatment from easyJet has been non existent.
"No refreshments. No offers of accommodation. Just a printed leaflet of the emails they sent at midnight, while the instructions to manage your booking on the app still are not working almost 27 hours later. As for any phone numbers - these don’t exist during the middle of the night when you’re alone in a cold airport.
"I will certainly be refraining from using easyJet in the future and will probably stick to caravan holidays in the UK."
After sleeping in the airport waiting for an announcement, the family hastily booked a flight to Paris instead. Naomi said: "Our decision was made good by the easyJet employee arriving on shift at 4am announcing that there would be no available flights to the UK before Wednesday.
"Luckily we were able to book Eurostar train tickets, and a connecting train to our home town from London St Pancras. We also arranged for family to collect our car that was parked at Liverpool airport." The family got to Paris and jumped in a taxi to Gare du Nord a few hours early, only to be told that their train was cancelled and they should rebook. The next available service was on Tuesday.
Naomi added: "After some tears, emotional phone calls and disbelief that we were in the same position we started in, but in a different country, we finally admitted defeat and retreated here, to this apartment so that we could rest and work out what to do.
"There are no direct flights from Paris to the UK today or tomorrow. No trains. We can’t get the ferry as they no longer accept foot passengers. We can’t find a car hire company that will allow us to hire in France and return in England, that’s assuming they’d accept a photograph of the driving licenses we left at home in the UK.
"We’ve rung the schools we work in to say we won’t be there tomorrow. We’ve broken our daughter's heart by telling her she won’t make her school trip that she’d so been looking forward to.
"I tried to book the earliest direct flight to Manchester I could on Tuesday AM, but as I got to the payment page, the flights were gone."
Now the family are stuck in Paris until Tuesday evening, when they hope a Eurostar train they're booked onto will actually take them home. They are far from the only ones who have been inconvenienced by airline disruption over the past week.
The Mirror has contacted EasyJet and Eurostar for comment.
