Ordeal of TUI passengers stuck in America amid two emergencies, visa drama and queues 'hundreds of people long'

Hundreds of passengers bound for Manchester became stuck in the US after a 'cherry picker' damaged their flight moments after an emergency landing. Travellers leaving Cancun, in Mexico, late on Monday (June 10) had already seen their TUI flight delayed by four hours due to a medical emergency on the incoming service.

But around an hour after take-off, the flight was forced to make another emergency stop following a passenger becoming unwell. Mel Lester, 52, told the Manchester Evening News that one of her fellow passengers had become unwell.

The flight landed at Charleston, in South Carolina, and firefighters arrived to rescue the sick passenger. But the ordeal took another unexpected twist when a 'cherry picker' used for emergency services to access the plane damaged the aircraft door - meaning the flight was unable to resume.

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Mel said: "They had just brought the meals out and we had an announcement to say we had to put all our trays on the floor and we would be making an emergency landing due to a medical emergency on our flight.

"They took the passenger off, then we were told we could not go anywhere because of the damage to the door. So there was a plane full of 360 passengers that didn't have the ESTA [visa waiver] to get into America."

Mel had been returning from a 12-night stay at Playa del Carmen, in Mexico, with a friend. She says passengers were told to try and apply for their ESTA on their phones at first, but she did not have sufficient signal.

"The captain kept making announcements," said Mel, from Staffordshire. "He said they were liaising with customs, that were liaising with