A furious Norfolk mother has slammed Ryanair staff after her 13-year-old daughter suffered a panic attack amid chaotic scenes at Stansted Airport.
Lisa Bailey, 43, and daughter Flora arrived at the airport at 3am on Wednesday for their 6.55am Ryanair flight to Sweden where they would be visiting relatives they had not seen for years.
But the pair from Loddon arrived to scenes of bedlam and confusion as a fault in the baggage handling department meant there were queues "the length of the airport".
Staff had to manually process baggage which led to hundreds of people queuing along the terminal to have their bags checked in.
The delay meant the pair were forced to rush to their departure gate and Ms Bailey claimed that as they tried to break through the crowds they were screamed at by Ryanair staff causing Flora to have a panic attack.
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She said: "They shouted in my face that I wasn't allowed to do that and that other people were also waiting.
"My daughter was having a panic attack she was so frightened by it all."
Turned away from the gate after missing their flight, they returned to the airport's waiting area where crowds were rapidly building.
"It was like nothing I've ever seen," Ms Bailey said. "The main hall at Stansted Airport was so packed that it was dangerous.
"Hundreds, if not thousands of people were tripping over each other and if there had been an incident there would have been an increased safety risk."
Ms Bailey said the Ryanair staff had “no sympathy” for what had happened and claims she was told she would need to pay a £100 rebooking fee as they were at blame for missing the flight.
"The way Ryanair staff treated us has been absolutely awful," she said.
A spokeswoman for Ryanair said: "Due to the baggage belt failure at Stansted Airport this morning, some passengers missed their flights.
"As a gesture of goodwill, Ryanair is re-accommodating affected passengers on the next available flight free of charge and all bags that were not loaded on their assigned flight due to the baggage belt failure are being shipped on the next available flight to the relevant destination.
"Ryanair apologises for the inconvenience caused which was entirely beyond Ryanair's control."
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The mother and daughter stayed at Stansted Airport to try and get on a rescheduled flight.
"My daughter needs to see her grandfather," Ms Bailey said. "She hasn't seen him in four years, not since before the pandemic.
"We'll wait until Thursday to see but after that we'll have to turn around and go home."
A spokesman for Stansted Airport added said: "Contingency plans were put in place at the time to minimise disruption with airport teams manually processing baggage while engineers worked to fix the issue.
"A small number of passengers may also have missed their flights due to the knock-on effect of the earlier problem."
The issue, caused by an IT issue, was said to have been resolved by 7am according to the airport.
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