Angry husband Jamie Purkis has condemned an airline which put his new wife in a hotel room with three strangers after a terrifying plane drama.

Duang Purkis, from Pattaya, Thailand, was flying for the first time when fellow passengers on a Phuket Air flight to Gatwick screamed in panic, demanding take off be aborted after seeing the fuel pour out of a Boeing 747's wing.

Jamie, 35, from Alinora Crescent, Goring, Worthing, planned to meet Duang at Gatwick at 9am on Sunday.

At 6am he read on Teletext the flight had been delayed but was unable to find out what was happening.

Jamie finally got a phone call from his 23-year-old wife, whom he married in Thailand last May, at 3.30am yesterday.

She told him she was sharing a hotel room with three strangers in the United Arab Emirates, where passengers had been given food but nothing to drink.

Jamie, a plasterer, said: "She said there was fuel going out over the wing. They aborted take off and the passengers then refused to fly, which is totally understandable.

"She has never flown before and could not understand what was going on. She was terrified.

"She is having to share a room with three people she has never met before. I think they have all been treated terribly."

Jamie finally got in touch with Phuket Air yesterday and was told his wife would arrive at Gatwick at 5pm last night.

Passengers claimed the jet was forced to abort take off twice after refuelling at Sharjah International Airport in the United Arab Emirates According to one witness, passengers screamed and demanded the pilot abandon take off . Three hours later, the pilot tried a second take off but passengers again spotted a fuel spillage.

Three hundred Britons were left stranded after refusing to fly on the 747 but about 30 managed to book flights with another airline.

Arriving at Gatwick, holidaymakers told how fellow passengers prepared to storm the cabin if the flight, which originally took off from Bangkok, Thailand, was not halted.

Debbie Phillips, 45, from Northampton, said: "People were standing up, shouting, screaming, and in fear for their lives, it was awful."

A Phuket Air spokeswoman, explaining why Duang was put in a hotel room with three strangers, said: "I think it was because the plane could have actually taken off. There was nothing wrong with the plane."

Phuket Air's UK sales and marketing manager Gordon MacFarland said the leak was caused by overfilled fuel tanks, no one had been in any danger and passengers had "panicked".

He went on: "On the second attempted take off, a passenger shouted fire' and this caused panic. No warning light came on in the cockpit but the crew could not get passengers to sit down and the plane had to go back to the stand.

"Again, no problem was found but people refused to get back on board so we put them up overnight. It's crazy to say gallons of fuel were leaking out.

"Are passengers really qualified to know what's going on? There was no danger to passengers. People sometimes panic. These passengers had come from a tsunami-hit area and were probably nervous. A few people panicked and caused the rest of the aircraft to panic."

Passenger Matthew Cripps, 39, from Cheltenham, Gloucestershire, said Phuket Air's version of events was "absolute rubbish".

He said: "During the second abortive take off, fuel was cascading from the plane. If that plane had taken off, it would have caught fire. Experienced cabin crew were screaming but it seemed the captain and the cockpit crew were determined to take off."