Holidaymakers returning to Northern Ireland from fire-ravaged Rhodes have told of their "nightmare" experiences as they tried to escape from the Greek island.
Flights landed at Belfast International Airport overnight on Tuesday, with another plane carrying passengers from the north expected to arrive late on Wednesday night.
Travel firm Jet2 confirmed on Wednesday that it has operated 20 flights to the UK from Rhodes so far this week.
A spokesman said: "We continue to fly aircraft to Rhodes with no customers onboard, so that we can bring our customers back to the UK on their scheduled flights, as well as any additional Jet2 customers who wish to return to the UK".
He added that all flights and holidays to Rhodes "remain cancelled up to and including Sunday 30 July".
For many who have made it home to Northern Ireland, the relief of touching down on home soil was evident.
Conor and Danielle Cullen from Co Tyrone told of the "hell" they endured after being evacuated from their hotel in Rhodes along with their two daughters, Chloe (13) and Molly (11).
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With just one small backpack of their belongings, the family were taken to a beach around five miles away and told that buses would return to take them back to the hotel.
But as it grew dark, Mrs Cullen said the danger of the nearby fire became more apparent.
"All you kept hearing was 'A bus is coming, a bus is coming' and then it starts to get dark and there's no electric, so no streetlights, no nothing," she told PA.
"And the darker it was getting the more you could see the flames, because during the day you couldn't see flames, it was all smoke, but then when it was getting darker, the sky, it was just red and orange with flames."
Mr Cullen said that "you could feel the tension in the air" with people becoming panicked.
"Because where the fire was didn't look as severe as it got later in the night, and then you could see that the fire actually spread right across the horizon, almost like an arc as if it was coming towards you," he said.
The family said they were then evacuated from the area by boat, but in the dark, which led to "just panic" as people tried to secure their place.
They said nobody spoke and there were no life jackets.
"We were on the boat for nearly three hours," added Mrs Cullen.
"We did not know where we were at when we were getting off....because everything was black, you did not know."
Following the boat journey, the Cullens were taken to emergency accommodation in Afantou, Rhodes.
They were later able to catch a repatriation flight to Gatwick and onto Belfast City Airport, arriving home on Monday evening.
Due to their house and car keys being in the hotel along with their belongings and some sentimental items, the Cullens had to get a locksmith to open the door of their house.
They said booking new flights and accommodation had cost around £1,000, but Mrs Cullen said their focus was on the safety of the people of Rhodes, and the other tourists making the journey back.
For four Co Tyrone teenagers, their dream 'Mamma Mia' inspired holiday to Lindos was also destroyed as the wildfires took hold.
The pals from Omagh were forced to sleep rough in a school evacuation centre for 15 hours after they were evacuated from their hotel.
"When we first heard about the wildfires and rumblings about evacuations in far away towns, we were under the impression that it would never happen to us and that nothing like that could spoil our holiday," Tara McDonagh told the Tyrone Constitution.
"However, the next day we started getting evacuation notices for villages much closer to us, we began to get worried.
"The following day, the smoke cloud got bigger and darker and they started to notice ash on the ground.
"At around midnight we got an alert that we had to evacuate and I have never seen a place clear out as quickly."
Describing their time at the evacuation centre as "probably the scariest time of our lives", Tara said they were "with around 2,000 others, all crammed into classrooms".
"People were lying everywhere. It was chaos," she added.
Despite running low on money, the group later persuaded a taxi driver to take them to the airport and they were able to board a flight to London, before a connecting flight to Belfast.
"We wanted a Mamma Mia holiday, but ended up with something from a nightmare natural disaster film."
