Hi @greycam
Could you please make sure that you were debugging the correct variables?
Could you please try the following code:
$departure_date = get_field('departure_date', false, false);
$departure_date = new DateTime($departure_date);
echo "\nderpature_date: \n" . $departure_date;
echo "\nformatted derpature_date: \n" . $departure_date->format('j M Y');
Thanks 🙂