40-hour flight delay fury.

Byline: James Johnston 

Furious air passengers have returned home after being left stranded in Greece for more than 40 hours.

An Excel Airways flight was due to travel from Skiathos to Newcastle at 3.45pm on Friday .

But the 260-plus passengers, including families and pensioners from the Tees Valley area, were delayed until the early hours of Sunday.

Fuelling problems followed by a technical fault were to blame, said the airline today.

But the Mayor of Stockton, Cllr Suzanne Fletcher and her husband, John, who were passengers, said the lack of communication and information was unacceptable.

"There were all sorts of problems but we were either given conflicting information or no information at all, which was extremely worrying for everyone," said Mrs Fletcher.

"People were trying to get in touch with friends and family back home who were picking them up, but didn't know what time to tell them to come back.

"Others needed medication out of their suitcases or hadn't taken enough to last until the Sunday.

"One woman was telling me her daughter had travelled from Germany to see her for the weekend but would have gone by the time we got back. Others had missed weddings and family celebrations."

Cllr Fletcher said their journey was initially delayed by three hours on Friday before they were allowed to board their plane home.

This stopped at Kavala to refuel before reaching Corfu airport just before midnight. She said they then boarded a new aircraft only to be told to get off again because of problems with the plane.

They were taken for a meal then returned to the airport.

She said: "When we got back I rang Newcastle airport to see if they had more information and they told me that they thought the plane had already set off!"

The plane failed to leave and passengers were taken to a hotel at 11am on Saturday.

Cllr Fletcher said: "This wasn't ready for us for two hours and the first chance we got to lie down was at 2pm on Saturday afternoon. We went back to the airport at about 10.30pm and eventually boarded at 12.10am on Sunday morning."

She said she had contacted MEP Fiona Hall about the incident. She believed up to 20 passengers were still waiting to receive their luggage.

A spokeswoman for Excel Airways said the plane had difficulties fuelling in Italy and by the time they reached Skiathos, the crew was "out-of-hours" and they had to arrange for a new team at Corfu airport.

She said they then experienced technical difficulties with the plane.

"It is very difficult to maintain communication with the passengers when we don't have an Excel representative in each airport," she said.

"We were trying to resolve the situation, arrange accommodation and meals in what was a very unfortunate series of events."

She would not confirm whether passengers would receive compensation.