Cancelled flights are displayed on a departures board at Stansted Airport, north of London, on 29 August 2023 after UK flights were delayed over a technical issue. Photo: AFP / Daniel Leal
The British government was working with airlines on Tuesday (local time) to help ensure passengers stranded in airports across Europe can get home after an air traffic control glitch caused widespread disruption to flights that is expected to last for days.
Over 1500 flights were cancelled on Monday - a public holiday in parts of the UK, and one of the busiest travel days as the school holidays draw to close - when air traffic controllers were forced to switch to manual systems due to a technical problem.
That left thousands of passengers stuck at airports in Europe and further afield.
"We were stuck in the airport for about seven or eight hours yesterday. We were left high and dry," said Maria Ball, a holidaymaker from Liverpool, in the northwest of England.
She said she ended up at Paris' Charles De Gaulle airport from another one in the city, having finally found a flight to Edinburgh and then facing a four-hour journey in a hire car to get home when she lands.
Mark Harper, the transport secretary, warned it would take days to resolve the issues even though the fault was fixed after a few hours on Monday as cancellations hit airline schedules, meaning planes and crews were out of place.
Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said he understood people were frustrated.
"The transport secretary is in constant dialogue with all the industry participants. He will be talking to airlines specifically later today and making sure that they support passengers to get home as quickly as possible," Sunak said.
Harper said government officials did not believe the technical problem, the first on this scale for a decade, was the result of a cyber attack.
Aviation analytics firm Cirium said 790 flights departing UK airports were cancelled and 785 flights due to arrive were cancelled on Monday, meaning just over a quarter of all flights into or out of the country were affected.
British Airways said it was working hard "to get back on track" and had offered passengers flying short-haul routes to change their flight dates free of charge.
EasyJet said that the knock-on impact meant some flights were cancelled this morning.
"While this is outside of our control, we apologise for the difficulty this has caused for our customers and we remain focused on doing all possible to assist and repatriate them as soon as possible at this very busy time of year," a spokesperson said.
Heathrow Airport, Britain's busiest hub, told passengers on X, formerly known as Twitter, to contact their airline before travelling to the airport on Tuesday.
- Reuters