‘Absolute chaos’ after TUI flights canceled at Birmingham Airport

Passengers flying with Tui at Birmingham Airport said it was “absolute chaos” after they were kept waiting for hours without food or drink when IT systems crashed on Friday.

Katie Potter, from Rugeley, Staffordshire, was due to fly to Turkey on Friday but spent almost 12 hours at the airport when her flight was cancelled.

She said passengers felt like “prisoners” after being moved from the boarding gate to the baggage claim area.

A Tui spokesman apologized and said it had taken the “difficult decision” to cancel a number of outbound flights following the global IT outage.

Ms Potter, who was traveling to Antalya with her family, said passengers had “no idea what was going on” in the hours following the IT outage.

After arriving at the airport at about 11:00 BST, ahead of her flight at about 3:30 p.m., she said the flight was first delayed an hour before passengers went to the boarding gate.

Another hour later, the pilot came out and announced that their flight would be canceled due to staffing issues, she said.

“All our luggage was on the plane,” she explained. “(The pilot) was 90 percent sure that the flight would be rescheduled for (Saturday) and that everyone would be accommodated in hotels if necessary.”

But what followed was a “nightmare in itself,” she said.

Passengers were then “scattered all over the baggage area” on arrivals to make room for a departing Emirates flight, where they spent more than two hours without “drinks, food, no access to anything”, including toilets.

“It was absolute chaos, I’ve never known anything like it,” Ms Potter told the BBC. “The children are crying. There is no air conditioning in the terminal, the sun was absolutely shining on it.”

Ms Potter, who is a dance teacher and runs a dance academy, said it appeared around four Tui flights had been canceled but there were no Tui or airport staff nearby.

Passengers eventually received emails from the airline confirming their flights had been cancelled, but were offered compensation vouchers.

Mrs Potter, who rebooked her holiday for Sunday with another airline, finally arrived home at midnight after collecting her bags.

“(The pilot) said in the 20 years he’s been on the job, he’s never seen anything like it,” she added.

Another passenger, who did not want to be named, told the BBC they waited at the gate for about four hours before the pilot told them they “didn’t have enough staff to take a plane out”.

He described the terminal as “like a greenhouse” and “very, very hot” and said passengers were concerned about others who were suffering from diabetes or other medical conditions.

“It’s a stressful situation, the pilot was saying it was a crew issue. They couldn’t get enough crew, before they changed their tune and said it was now an IT issue,” he said.

Several companies including banks, media outlets, railways and airlines were among those affected on Friday morning as the global IT outage affected computer systems around the world.

A spokesman for Birmingham Airport said on Friday that most flights were “operating normally” during the IT outage, but some bookings had experienced delays which were being processed by colleagues.

In a statement, Tui told the BBC that its overall level of service had been “severely affected” by the global IT outage and that it was “deeply sorry” for the inconvenience it had caused to customers.

“While the initial IT issue was beyond our control, a critical system needed to run our airline’s operations remained unstable late last night,” a spokesman said.

“We are very sorry for all those customers affected as we understand how disappointing this would have been and recognize that many customers were already at the airport awaiting their departure,” they added.

“We would like to reassure customers returning home from holiday that there will be inbound flights and we will update them directly when we have more information.”

Passengers traveling this weekend have also been advised to check the Tui website regularly for updates.