Northumberland family's holiday nightmare after global IT outage prevented Disneyland Paris trip

A Northumberland mum fears that her family have "lost their life savings" after her kids were left sleeping on the floor at Heathrow Airport when they should have been at Disneyland Paris.

An IT breakdown caused when cybersecurity firm CloudStrike launched an update impacted trains, flights and health services across the world last Friday, July 20. Laura Waite, 37, from Ashington, was caught up in the chaos at Heathrow Airport after flying from Newcastle to catch a connecting flight to the family holiday of a lifetime.

Laura and her husband Paul, 40, had planned to take their three children aged seven, six, and two on holiday to Disneyland Paris, which they had "saved up for for years". However, they are now worried that they have lost all of their money on the package booked through LoveHolidays after last week's events.

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One of their children, who has severe autism, was unable to board the delayed flight from Newcastle to Heathrow, so Paul left the airport with him. Laura continued onto Heathrow with her other two children, expecting Paul and her son to re-book and follow on the following day.

But on arrival at Heathrow Terminal Five, the dream trip turned into a nightmare. Laura says she and her two kids were told they weren't able to board their flight to Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport, and she says "no-one was telling us anything" in the airport.

British Airways have apologised for the disruption and say its "teams worked hard to limit the impact on our customers" while Heathrow Airport said, despite the IT issues, "the vast majority of passengers got on their journeys without any disruption".

The mum says she stood in a queue for a customer service information desk from 7.30pm and had moved roughly one metre by the time the shutters came down at 11pm, still none the wiser if and when they would make their onward leg to the French capital. Not wanting to lose their place in the queue, they spent the entire time without food, water or a toilet break.

Laura, who is a full-time carer for her son, told ChronicleLive: "We couldn't even see the back of the queue, we didn't have a clue what we were waiting for, what was going to happen.

"Then everybody started running, they were going to another customer service desk away from Terminal 5. Everyone that was waiting at the back was now at the front, and they had just two people on them for all these people from flights all over the world - it just got bigger and bigger."

British Airways sent an email to Laura at 11.40pm which was opened at 11.53pm, advising that there had been a change to her booking. The airline say this contained guidance on customer rights in the events of delays and any cancellations, including information on claiming expenses and cancellation.

Government guidance states that if a passengers' flight is cancelled, they are denied boarding or waiting for an alternative flight, or there is a delay of at least two hours, the airline must provide passengers with care and support, such as meals and refreshments. If the cancellation or delay means an overnight stay (which in this case it did), passengers are entitled to hotel accommodation and transport between the airport and accommodation.

Ms Waite says that none of this occurred in person on Friday night and that she was offered a £10 voucher for food when leaving the airport on Saturday morning. So, with two exhausted children, Laura bedded them down outside the shutters of the British Airways Baggage Queries desk in Terminal Five - but didn't dare fall asleep herself.

She says she asked for blankets, but with none available, she had to wrap the kids in jumpers from their hand luggage. The family's hold luggage had not been returned, and Laura says there was no communication on that either.

When Laura did eventually manage to speak a member of British Airways staff in the early hours of Saturday morning, she says she was told it was unlikely the trio would be able to board a flight to Paris until Monday. She decided at this point, the best option was to collect the luggage and head home to Newcastle, and claims that she had to tell staff there was medication in the case to get it back - British Airways declined to comment on any of the matters related to Ms Waite's luggage.

After four more hours of queuing for the cases, she left Heathrow at 8.30am on Saturday morning with two suitcases and a buggy. Not wanting to carry those on a train and the London Underground, she spent a further £114 on a taxi to King's Cross, then another £310 on train fares back to Newcastle.

Speaking to ChronicleLive after returning home, Laura said: "I'm still very, very emotional, especially when we didn't get any sleep for so long. My daughter is breaking her heart saying she won't get to see the Disney princesses and it's totally heart-wrenching for her.

"It's not that we didn't understand, it was total neglect, there were no British Airways staff to talk. All someone had to do was walk down the queue, say 'let's see what we can do' and make you comfortable for the night, and tell us that it was going to take days.

"Some people can deal with the facts if they're armed with them and make their own decision. But if this is how the back-up plan goes because they can't get onto a computer, it's quite frightening really."

Laura and Paul now plan to take their kids to Chester Zoo in the summer holidays to make up for the doomed Disneyland trip. And Laura hopes that she will be able to recoup at least some of the money to help towards paying for those.

Laura finished: "We spent £4,000 yet we have seen nothing for it. We have got a disabled child, I cannot work because of all his appointments and we have been saving for years for this holiday - we just wanted to do something nice for the kids."

A spokesperson for British Airways said: "We apologised to customers who experienced disruption due to the widely-reported global IT outage, and our teams worked hard to limit the impact on our customers. Our teams are contacting (Ms Waite) the customer to help resolve the issue."

A representative of Heathrow airport told ChronicleLive: "Regarding Heathrow’s operations on July 19, while it was a very busy day for the airport, which was expected due to it being a peak travel period, but our the operation handled the IT issues well. While airlines made the decision to cancel a small number of flights, the contingencies we put in place meant the vast majority of passengers got on their journeys without any disruption.

"We had additional Heathrow colleagues in the terminals on Friday and Saturday to answer any questions passengers had. All systems were back up and running by the start of the day on Saturday, July 20."

An AXA Partners spokesperson said: "We are currently assessing Ms Waite’s claim and will continue to assist her throughout the claims process."