Scots TUI passengers stranded in Turkey ‘unsure when they will get home’

Scots holidaymakers stranded in Turkey have “no idea” when they can return home after flights were cancelled again.

Hundreds of families in Antalya have been stuck in resorts since last weekend after airline TUI axed flights following a global IT outage.

Today the airline cancelled another spate of re-booked flights for the second time. Holidaymakers have been told they will have to wait until Thursday but have been warned there is no guarantee of a flight home.

Gran Pauline Clements, who lives near Wishaw, is stuck in Turkey with her family, including her three grandchildren. The group were due to fly into Glasgow Airport on Saturday, July 20th but their flight was cancelled after being delayed twice.

They were rebooked onto a flight from Antalya airport today but the airline axed the route in the middle of the night.

Pauline, 64, told the Record: “We have no idea when we will get home now.

“I was due to be back in Glasgow six days ago.

“At this rate we would be here for another week if our flight doesn’t go ahead on Thursday.

“It’s pure chaos out here.

“Nobody knows what is happening and TUI reps seem to have no information.

“We’ve been told we can stay in the same hotel until tomorrow but beyond that we may be moved again.”

She added: “We just want to go home. It’s been days, I don’t understand why they can’t get us out of here.”

The Crowdstrike IT outage caused global disruption across the world forcing flights, banks, businesses and broadcasters offline. People have now been warned that the impact of the outage could potentially last for “weeks”.

Pauline and her family first arrived on July 5 for a two-week holiday. They waited at Antalya airport for hours on Saturday morning before they were loaded onto a bus like ‘cattle’ alongside dozens of families.

Passengers were then left at an overbooked hotel and had to share rooms with strangers.

“My granddaughter turned two while we were out here waiting,” Pauline continued.

“Our grandson is turning nine tomorrow and missing his birthday party with his friends.

“We’ve got our dogs in the kennels and we are all missing work.

“I understand there are delays when something like this happens but this is ridiculous.”

Michelle Sangster, from Glasgow was due to fly home from Turkey in the early hours of Monday, July 22. The mum, alongside her husband and two kids were moved into a new hotel after she noticed their flight home had been cancelled on the TUI app.

They have also been told they won’t be rebooked onto a flight home until Thursday at the earliest.

“The lack of communication is a real problem. TUI don’t seem to know what they are doing”, she said.

“Other airlines are operating and have managed to get customers home after Friday’s chaos.

“It seems that TUI don’t have a recovery plan in place and there’s no effort to clear a backlog of people stuck out here.

“We’ve no idea when we’re going to get back home.”

A TUI spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise to our customers who were impacted by the global IT outage that resulted in some delays and cancellations.

“Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control the impact, alongside air traffic control restrictions over the weekend, meant we had to cancel some flights and delay some return flights home. We understand how frustrating this would have been and recognise that many of these delays happened when our customers were already at the airport.

“We would like to reassure customers that if they are currently overseas our TUI team will look after them and flights home provided. We will continue to update customers with more information and can confirm that if a return flight time has changed we will contact them directly 24 hours before departure.

“We thank our customers for their understanding and continued patience.”

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