Air travel chaos: Travel chaos on land and sea scuppers chance of an alternative route home

DUE to return from Copenhagen on Thursday, Phyllis Buchanan and her family have endured a 32-hour dash around Europe in search of a way home – only to end up back in Denmark.

The 42-year-old and her partner, Thomas Widmann, tried to arrange a quick return to Glasgow on Friday, and managed to reserve train tickets from Copenhagen to Amsterdam via Hamburg, a 14-hour journey with six changes.

They then intended to catch a ferry from Amsterdam to Newcastle, before making their way back to Scotland.

But when the couple and their children, Anna and Amaia, arrived at the train station, they found their ferry ticket had been sold to someone else. Undeterred they decided to take their train as arranged.

Delays due to the sheer number of people on the rail network meant they missed a later connecting train, and were offered a free hotel room by a kindly woman.

Nonetheless, the problems continued the next morning, when a technical fault meant the departure point of their train to Amsterdam was changed at the last minute and they missed it.

"We concluded that this would be useless, given that there were no hotel rooms left in Amsterdam," Mr Widmann said.

"So we asked to get back to Denmark."