IT outage cancels twins’ birth trip as mum must pay £2,000 in Gatwick chaos

A furious mum hit out at an airline after they canceled her twins’ maternity leave – costing her an extra £2,000.

Lauren Eells, from Croydon, south London, was left devastated for her six-year-old twins Effie and Ruairí, who were due to celebrate their birthdays abroad. She said they were left waiting on the floor of Gatwick airport for six hours without food or water after the 9.40am Vueling flight to Barcelona was canceled on Friday.

The mum says she has yet to receive any help from the airline – and was forced to pay an “extra £2,000” to fly on holiday with her family on Tuesday. It comes after Britain was hit by a global IT outage that caused chaos at airports, hospitals, doctors’ surgeries and even banks.

The mass disruption was caused by Texas-based software company CrowdStrike after it released a software update that went awry. The CEO has since come out and apologized for the issue, which may take some time to resolve. Lauren’s family joins thousands of others who were victims of the system failure, which left dozens of businesses offline. The major glitch has prompted airlines to ask passengers to go home as airports are flooded with stranded customers.

Speaking to The Mirror about the ordeal, Lauren said: “I had a 9.40am flight to Barcelona. We arrived at the airport just after 6.30 and were sent into a line that wrapped around the airport. I stayed there. until 11.30 when a man from Gatwick came out and told us that any flight before 10 was cancelled.

“So my twins’ birthday, which was supposed to be in Spain, will now be spent in Croydon while we wait for an EasyJet flight on Sunday.” A video he shot at the airport shows chaotic scenes where a member of staff informed passengers through a megaphone that flights were not taking off due to a “worldwide issue” – and told them “we will not be able to help you”.

Lauren explained: “A woman got on a megaphone and shouted for us all to go home. For hours we tried to get someone who worked for Vueling – no one turned up and calling got you nowhere – they said “read your emails”. I didn’t get an email and the earliest I could get to Barcelona for over four times the price was Sunday. I spoke to customer service and the man said he doesn’t owe anyone an apology and I have to wait.”

She continued: “They told us we will only get compensation if the flight they offer us is later than the flight we have now paid for. At no time were we offered anything. Apparently they came with water, but not close to us, and so we had two six-year-olds on the floor for six hours without food or water.”

According to aviation analytics firm Cirium, around 1,396 flights were canceled globally on Friday, including 43 departures from the UK. Crowdstrike CEO George Kurz vowed to make sure “every customer is recovered” after the insecure software update. He said: “It is our mission to ensure that every customer is fully recovered and we will not give up until we get every customer back to where they were and we will continue to protect and safeguard those heaven. their systems”.

The Mirror has contacted Vueling for comment.