Kids sleeping on floors and in opened suitcases after being stuck 22 hours at airport over CrowdStrike meltdown
A MUM and her three kids are among dozens of passengers stranded for more than 22 hours in a Moroccan airport after their flight was cancelled due to the CrowdStrike outage.
Anne Lowe, 43, and her 14, 10 and seven-year-old children were left to sleep on the floor while trying to return to the UK from Marrakech after package holiday firm TUI failed to find them a hotel.
She says free water was only handed out after they had been stuck for 10 hours — with sandwiches the only food available.
Anne says reps reneged on promises to find them a room and told how repeated claims updates would come have not been met.
Anne told The Scottish Sun: “Nobody has any idea what is happening.
“Passengers on other flights are milling about around us then leaving.
“It’s baking hot because there’s no air conditioning.
“We’ve been told repeatedly there will be an update soon only for that not to happen.
“The staff don’t seem to speak English so there’s a lot of confusion.
“One passenger told me they had run out of epilepsy medication.
“Babies are sleeping on opened suitcases on top of dirty washing on the floor.”
Anne and her kids, from Kilsyth, Lanarkshire, were due to fly from the airport to London Gatwick at 8pm on Friday.
They got to the airport and checked but were told their flight had been delayed.
It was cancelled and their luggage was returned with a promise of emergency accommodation.
But the railway worker says the vow of rooms never materialised leaving them and others stuck in the terminal.
The mum of three says they were told more information would come but says appeals for clarity have been met with shrugs from staff.
Anne paid £3,000 for her two-week all inclusive stay in the African hotspot but has been left without cash after an ATM swallowed her card.
She added: “I only managed an hour or so of sleep.
“It’s so uncomfortable and 40°C outside with no air conditioning.
“I need to be awake in case an update comes.
“We haven’t been able to leave the airport for that reason.
“Anything they have told us has been wrong.
“We’re stuck and nobody seems to want to help us.”
Adding to the pain was missing their travel bookings home once back in the UK.
“I had booked the Premier Inn hotel at Gatwick for Friday night and trains to Glasgow, so I am going to lose out on that as well.”
The IT crash has been blamed on a coding error in an update to CrowdStrike software used by firms globally.
More than 5,000 flights have been grounded after the computer meltdown which impacted major carriers, including Ryanair, Delta Airlines, Air India and Qantas.
Huge queues snaked through airports in Edinburgh and across Europe.
A TUI spokesman said: “Due to the global IT issue at airports and airlines around the world yesterday, TUI’s overall service level was heavily impacted and we would like to apologise to everyone affected.
“Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, an essential system needed to run our airline operation remained unstable late into last night.
“We therefore made the difficult decision to cancel a number of outbound flights and delayed a number of inbound flights returning to the UK.
“We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure.
“We would like to reassure customers due to return home from their holiday that we are working on their new flight times and we will be in contact directly with further details.
“We also ask that all TUI customers due to travel this weekend regularly check the TUI website for updates.
“We will also contact customers directly via text message and email if there are any changes to their flights.
“We are deeply sorry for the inconvenience this has caused to our customers, and our teams are working extremely hard to get everyone on or home from their holiday as soon as possible.”