A family, who had high hopes of catching some winter sun, instead endured a nightmare journey due to the recent snow weather conditions. The family of three found themselves 'caged' on a Ryanair plane for five hours, as staff waited for a defrosting machine to become available.
Lisa, along with her husband John and their son Jacob, were told to wait on the plane before eventually being told to come back on Sunday for another flight. Lisa says holiday-goers were only offered one cup of water and no food as they patiently waited to jet off.
After finally managing to get off the plane, they were then told that their bags would be staying onboard. Tired and weary, the family jumped into a waiting taxi and headed to a hotel, arranged by the airline.
But instead of being able to get their heads down and put the bad experience behind them, the day got even worse. What followed was an entire night of driving through Manchester and Cheshire to find a hotel room.
Speaking exclusively to the Manchester Evening News, Lisa 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."
After a long night of driving from hotel to hotel, Lisa and her family checked into a hotel at 1.30am. They were told the airline had already arranged taxis for them in the morning to take them back to the airport but they opted to sort out their own taxi with other passengers instead - costing £55.
Passengers were still to be reunited with their luggage on the Sunday when they were told of a two-hour delay - only for a false dawn when they 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.”
