Birmingham Airport chaos: Tourists touch down nearly 30 hours late after nightmare journey from Portugal

It came as Bank Holiday bedlam at Birmingham Airport, which saw passengers forced to wait hours for bags and flights on one of the busiest weekends of the year, subsided and operations returned to normal.

The 250 passengers touched down at Birmingham International Airport at 1.39am - a few minutes short of 30 hours late - after their intended carrier Monarch was forced to charter a replacement plane from rival airline Thomas Cook.

One passenger was overcome by the heat at Faro airport during the marathon wait. He fainted and had to be taken away for treatment by paramedics. Another was travelling with a seven week old baby.

See also: Birmingham Airport delays: Bank Holiday bedlam as passengers vent their anger

Jinxed flight ZB407 also saw a few passengers standing for two hours on the Tarmac beside the Monarch aircraft during an unsuccessful bid to fix a fault.

When it was finally repaired the plane could still not take off because there was no crew - they had been involved in a crash while travelling back to Faro airport and two were in hospital. Then Thomas Cook came to the rescue.

The Monarch aircraft had been delayed at Birmingham International by a check in system failure on Saturday, leaving for Faro seven hours late.

A technical fault was discovered during preparation for take off on the return leg five hours late. Richard Beard, 36, explained: "I was one of several passengers who had to stand by the plane for two hours because our seats had to be vacated to fix the problem."

The fault could not be repaired and the 250 tourists were taken by bus to a hotel. They returned on Sunday afternoon to discover the plane was fit to fly - but there was nobody to fly it.

Holidaymaker Joel Carr said: "There are a lot of very angry passengers. One fainted because of the heat and was taken away by the paramedics. A lady here had a seven week old baby.

"We received a six Euro voucher each and later a 10 Euro voucher which was awful compensation for the time we had to wait in Faro airport."

Colette Eagles from Monarch said: "We are really sorry about the delay to their flight home. The initial delay was compounded by the fact that our crew had an accident on the way to the airport and two of them had to be taken to hospital. This meant that we were unable to operate the flight home on our aircraft. Therefore we chartered a Thomas Cook aircraft to get the customers home as soon as possible."

No problems were reported with flights in and out of Birmingham International yesterday.

No problems were reported with baggage handling yesterday, although talks are continuing to prevent a repeat of Saturday's problems, which operators Aviator blamed on staff shortages.