“It has been horrendous,” says Kelly Fewery, after spending the night sleeping on an airport floor.
She is stranded with her husband, Alan Jones, and their son and niece, at Dalaman Airport in Turkey since an air traffic control fault in the UK cancelled more than 1,750 flights.
The family, from Blackpool, said it was “absolute chaos” at the airport after their 23:30 Jet2 return flight to Manchester was cancelled on Tuesday night.
Jones, 51, said they were frustrated with a lack of communication from Jet 2 Staff, adding: “We are all absolutely exhausted. We got very little sleep.”
“We just want to get on a plane – that’s all we want,” he said.
Jet2 said the disruption was “out of our control” but staff were “continuing to work tirelessly to communicate with and look after all customers”.
Flight delays are continuing after tens of thousands of passengers were hit by disruption on Tuesday.
A further 153 flights have been axed so far on Wednesday, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Nats, the air traffic control provider, blamed a technical glitch and its boss Martin Rolfe apologised, saying there would be a full investigation after the firm admitted resolving the issue had taken “longer than hoped”.
Jet 2 said it had put on additional flights to get people home.
“We would of course like to apologise to everyone affected by this disruption, and we share their frustration,” a spokesperson said.
Fewery, 47, said: “Children were blowing up lilos [to sleep on] and people were emotional and they were crying.”