Airlines continue to cancel flights on Tuesday after UK air traffic control chaos

British transport minister Mark Harper said it would take days to resolve the widespread disruption to flights into and out of the country after air traffic control systems were hit by a technical problem.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed on Monday – one of the country’s busiest travel days – after air traffic controllers were forced to switch to manual systems.

“There is going to be some knock on impact today and I suspect for another few days as airlines get their planes and get their services back to normal,” Mr Harper told the BBC on Tuesday.

The Independent’s Travel Correspondent Simon Calder on Tuesday reported airlines had grounded dozens more flights following the bank holiday travel disruptions.

The Government does not believe the travel disruption at UK airports was caused by a cybersecurity incident, but there will be an independent review, the Transport Secretary has said.

Asked about the nature of the incident, Mark Harper told GB News: “This was a technical fault. We do not think this was a cybersecurity incident.

“And what will happen now with an incident of this magnitude is there will be an independent review.

“The Civil Aviation Authority will be putting together a report in the coming days, which obviously I will take a look at to see whether there are lessons to learn for the future, to see whether we can reduce the impact of this again.

“It’s nearly a decade since there was a significant issue like this.

“We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again, because of all the disruption that’s been caused to passengers across the country.”

Train operators have stepped in to assist passengers hit by airline cancellations.

LNER, which runs trains on the East Coast main line between London, Newcastle and Scotland, and the intercity operator TransPennine Express, are offering free rail travel for passengers returning to the UK who arrive at a different airport to their original destination.

Travellers must produce evidence of flight disruption.

As airlines struggle to recover from the four-hour failure of the main air-traffic control system across the UK on Monday, airlines are making dozens more cancellations.

Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, has grounded more than 80 flights on Tuesday. Three dozen are at Gatwick, including flights serving holiday destinations such as Athens and Venice.

In Scotland, Edinburgh is hard hit with 22 easyJet cancellations, including long flights to Rhodes and Tenerife. At Manchester, easyJet has grounded 14 flights.

The airline has also cancelled flights from Luton to and from Amsterdam, Malaga and Murcia.

British Airways has grounded more than 60 flights on Tuesday.

Ryanair, Europe’s biggest budget airline, has grounded about 40 departures, mainly from London Stansted and Edinburgh.

Passengers tell The Independent their stories of the worst day of travel chaos since the Iceland volcano.

Passengers stuck in the UK and abroad described their frustration, as some had no idea when or how they would get to their destination.

Rory Dollard, 40, cricket correspondent for PA Media, was stuck at Bergerac Dordogne Perigord airport in France and was told it may take up to six days before he and his family – his wife Joanne, 40, and children Emily, 10, and Arthur, eight – could return home to Skipton, North Yorkshire.

Lyudmila Hristova, 57, said her and her husband’s plans to attend her niece’s wedding in Bulgaria were “ruined” after BA cancelled their 2pm flight from Heathrow to Sofia.

And a German couple were considering returning home by train after their flight from London to Stuttgart was cancelled.

Myria Mebold, 36, also said that British Airways “didn’t know anything at all” when she and her husband asked about the situation and their flight.

Major UK airlines such as Tui and BA warned of “significant delays” for passengers amid changes to schedules.

Passengers were urged by airlines to check before they leave for the airport as their flight times may have changed.

Heathrow Airport tweeted yesterday night: “We apologise for any inconvenience as a result of the Nats technical issues today.

“The issue has been resolved however schedules remain significantly disrupted. If you are travelling on 29th August, please ensure you contact your airline before travelling to the airport.”

Even though airlines are not to blame for the outage, the companies are obliges to care for passengers, writes our travel correspondent Simon Calder.

There is nothing to suggest that the technical issue leading to flight delays was the result of a cyber attack, reported PA News, adding that the authorities are investigating the matter.

Meanwhile, Juliet Kennedy, operations director at National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the country’s leading provider of air traffic control, apologised for the flight delays and its impact on people’s travel plans.

Holidaymakers were hit by bank holiday travel delays, which started on Monday after a UK air traffic control failure meant flight plans had to be input manually by controllers.

The issue meant the automatic system that provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route had stopped working, explained Ms Kennedy, adding that what happened will be investigated “very thoroughly”.

“Instead, to manage safety, we had to limit the number of flights we could manage,” she said.

“Our teams worked hard to resolve the problem, and I’m pleased to say it was fixed earlier on this afternoon. However, it will take some time for flights to return to normal.

“And we will continue to work with the airlines and the airports to recover the situation. Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened today.

“Again, I would like to apologise for the impact on the travelling public and to tell you that our teams will continue to work to get you on your way as soon as we can.”

My colleague Rachel Flynn reports on what to do to better deal with delays:

Yesterday’s technical issues led to the cancellation of 232 flights departing from UK airports, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Another 271 arriving flights had to be cancelled, it said.

This equates to about eight per cent of all expected departures and nine per cent of expected arrivals for a single day at UK airports, Cirium added.