A passenger hit by travel chaos says he was forced to wait in a three-hour queue with more than 2,000 people at Stansted Airport.
Rafa de Miguel arrived four hours before his Ryanair flight to Madrid when he “sensed the mood change” as passengers found out about the Microsoft outage.
The 56-year-old says staff were forced to write out boarding passes and luggage tags in pen because the IT system was down.
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Rafa, from Notting Hill, West London, told What’s the Jam: “It’s been chaos and I was queuing for three and a half hours.
“We know that the system went down.
“There were a lot of people waiting there.
“I would say there were about 2,000-3,000 people waiting to check in.
“There are mothers with babies and children in all this confusion.
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“When I arrived, I sensed a change in mood where people didn’t know what was going on.
“People were checking their phones and I checked the BBC and saw the news that Microsoft was down and thought it was going to be chaos and it was.
“Self-check-in wasn’t working and it wasn’t letting people check in their baggage.
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“They had to organise every flight and get some kind of organisation.
“They had to send people to the counters and do the whole process manually, with a pen.
“It’s a perfect example of us being too reliant on the internet.
“It goes down and the world goes crazy.
“You could tell the staff weren’t used to writing with a pen.”
Rafa took videos of hundreds of anxious passengers waiting to check in, which he later shared online.
“Complete chaos at Ryanair bag drop at Stansted Airport,” his tweet read.
“Queues are not respected, instructions are confusing and no information available.”
Rafa already had his boarding pass when he arrived at the airport but still needed to check in his luggage.
He added: “I was already checked in.
“It’s typical because it’s the only time I’m flying with baggage this year.
“I usually travel light.”
Jam Press has contacted Ryanair for comment.
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