The Brookes family was flying to Durban from Manchester on Christmas Eve with a stop in Dubai.
Son, Joshua, who is 12 was stopped from flying because of a missing travel document.
Apparently, new laws now require child visitors to have a full birth certificate which caused Joshua and his Mum to fly out six days into their two week break.
The cause of the pair being stopped from boarding was because of South Africa’s new strict child trafficking laws. The Emirates staff at Manchester airport stopped the two from boarding because they did not have the long version of Joshua’s birth certificate.