British Airways has promised to compensate passengers who were forced to sleep overnight on the floor at Venice airport because cabin crew had worked their maximum hours.
Around 140 passengers, including some children, had to spend the night at the closed airport without food and drink.
Their flight had been delayed due to a technical fault, which meant crew had worked more than the legal number of hours.
BA said Venice was so busy, it could not find hotel rooms for the passengers or the cabin crew.
Some passengers told the BBC that staff locked the doors and also locked up their luggage.
In a statement yesterday, BA said: “We’re very sorry for the disruption faced by our customers and will work with them to provide compensation. We always do everything we can to avoid an overnight flight delay, but when this happens we offer hotel accommodation to those travelling with us.
“Unfortunately, due to the volume of visitors to Venice we could not secure any rooms for our customers or cabin crew.
“The aircraft due to operate the flight to Gatwick was delayed into Venice because of a technical fault earlier in the day. Unfortunately this meant that the cabin crew responsible for the safety of our customers had exceeded their available working hours, and were unable to operate the flight back to London. The two pilots were still within their hours and returned the aircraft to London.
“We sent a replacement aircraft to Venice this morning (Thursday) to carry those affected customers back to Gatwick.”
