British tourists stranded in Portugal after fuel pump breakdown

British holidaymakers have been stuck at Lisbon airport - after a fuel pump breakdown left flights grounded.

A number of passengers were forced to sleep on the terminal floor after the system failure on Wednesday left thousands stranded.

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The Portuguese national carrier TAP and Ryanair were among the airlines affected.

One holidaymaker, Ella Sykes, 27, from Leeds, told the Evening Standard that the terminal was "absolute carnage", when she arrived at 2pm for a 5.30pm Ryanair flight to Manchester.

She said: "We have been here all night.

"It's 17 hours now and we still haven't had any information from Ryanair. We have given up on the queues. We've booked a flight from Faro tomorrow morning.

"We are exhausted and we've had to fork out for accommodation overnight as well. And I was meant to be at work this morning."

She also explained that she had tablets she needed in her main carrier, posting updates of the situation on Twitter.

Ella also took to Facebook to vent her frustration.

Lisbon airport explained on its Facebook page that there had been problems with the supply of fuel to aircraft, and added that it hoped flight would return to normal during Thursday.

According to ITV News, a spokesman for Ryanair said: "Due to a fuelling system outage at Lisbon Airport last night, we regret that we were forced to cancel a number of flights to/from Lisbon.

"All affected customers were provided with refreshment and accommodation vouchers, were contacted by email and SMS text message and advised of their options of a full refund, a free transfer on to the next available flight, or a free transfer on to an alternative flight route, in full compliance with EU261 legislation.

"Ryanair sincerely apologised to all customers affected by this disruption, which was entirely beyond our control."

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We've heard of vomiting bugs in hotels and cruises but rarely on a plane. On a flight from Chile to Sydney in August 2013, 26 passengers became violently ill with gastroenteritis after celebrating at a festival in Brazil and picking up the bug before boarding the plane. Some of the passengers were taken to hospital once the plane landed in Sydney and the plane had to be quarantined and disinfected upon arrival. This is one flight we're really glad we weren't on as the Boeing 747-400 only had eight toilets and the group developed vomiting and diarrhoea.