A holidaymaker set to fly home from Corfu in Greece blasted travel firm TUI after a plane he and other passengers were kicked off flew to its destination without them.
Steve Dongworth and his partner Sean Rafferty, who had enjoyed a one-week cruise on the Adriatic Sea, were due to fly to Aberdeen at 10.15pm on Friday (July 22), but the flight was initially delayed until 1pm.
Passengers were then taken by bus to the plane, only to be told while boarding that the flight had been cancelled because the captain had gone over his legal time limit for working hours.
TUI was unable to provide last-minute accommodation and the passengers were left stranded in the "sweltering" airport until their new flight time of 1.45pm the next day.
As a result, people had to sleep on the hard floor of the airport's departure lounge.
At 3.44am, Mr Dongworth was shocked to see on the FlightRadar24 tracking app that their TOM4TE flight to Aberdeen had actually taken off and was on its way to Aberdeen.
Passengers were later told it was actually the cabin crew - not the captain - that had worked over their limits, and they needed to rest before they could board the plane again.
Mr Dongworth, who branded TUI's behaviour as "disgusting", told the Daily Mail he saw elderly people and "children with autism" distressed by the whole ordeal and parents with kids begging for water.
"At 3am a TUI rep appeared but hid behind a door on her phone for 30 minutes and told us she didn't know anything," he said.
"We were told those who wanted to leave could do so but would not be allowed back into the gate until they had checked in for the new flight.
"Obviously, we were not keen on leaving the airport to wander the streets of Corfu at 4am, so we all got told to find a café and wait there."
Some food was eventually offered to passengers, said Mr Dongworth, but he was unable to eat it because of his dietary restrictions and made do with a bag of crisps kindly donated by a fellow passenger.
The holidaymakers finally managed to get on another flight to Aberdeen at 1.45pm on Saturday.
A spokesperson for TUI said: 'We're really sorry to customers travelling on flight TOM1585 from Corfu to Aberdeen on 22nd July which was unfortunately delayed as a result of knock-on operational disruption.
"The crew for this flight was impacted by an earlier delay which meant they were outside their mandatory operating hours and needed to rest before operating the flight from Corfu.
"Our teams were handing out bottles of water and meal vouchers to affected customers at Corfu Airport and we kept them up to date with text messages while we worked on a new flight plan.
"Regretfully, a lack of hotel availability in the area meant we couldn't source any overnight accommodation for customers as we normally would in these circumstances.
"Customers are entitled to EU 261 compensation and details of how to claim have also been provided.
"We do everything we can to get customers away as planned and, while instances like this are rare, we recognise we fell short of our usually high standards and apologise again."
