Jamie Whitehead
Live reporter

And that brings an end to our coverage of the travel disruption brought on by Monday's air traffic control glitch.

Although the system is back to normal, the cancellations are causing a backlog and it could still be a few days before it’s fully cleared.

If you’ve been with us all day, thank you for joining us.

• If you want to read more on this story you can here
• And if you're stuck at an airport somewhere, you can see what your rights are here
• If you are due to fly, check with your airline before making your way to the airport

Today's coverage was bought to you by Marita Moloney, Alexandra Fouché, Michael Sheils McNamee, Barbara Tasch, Jacqueline Howard, Ece Goksedef, Krystyna Gajda and me.

All day, we've been hearing stories from people stranded in airports around Europe, many of whom are still awaiting an available flight.

Here's a recap of the key developments:

• National Air Traffic Services (Nats) are still investigating what caused the issue, while the government confirmed earlier the recent disruption was not caused by a cyber-attack
• The International Air Transport Association (IATA) says Nats has "crucial questions to answer about their responsibility for this fiasco"
• Delays and cancellations are still having knock-on effects today, but overall the situation is improving
• The Department of Transport has now allowed night flying to clear the backlog in UK flights
• EasyJet says it is now operating normally and is offering repatriation options for affected customers
• The government says it is ready to support the airlines if they need it

Zoe Kleinman
Technology editor

National Air Traffic Services (Nats) says its investigation into what caused the failure is ongoing. There has been much speculation but it does not yet know why its system failed.

What we do know is that the tech which fell over was a flight path data processing tool.

Airlines submit every flight path to the national control centre; these should automatically be shared with Nats controllers, who oversee UK airspace.

But that didn’t happen, meaning Nats staff had to distribute this information manually, and they couldn’t do that as quickly or safely as the automated tool.

Nats is largely funded by the airlines, who were hit hard by huge losses during the Covid-19 pandemic.

A business plan published by the organisation last year states that cost-cutting measures including voluntary staff redundancies had been implemented, and Nats confirmed to me that the pandemic had affected its investment plans – and this included maintaining old systems for longer.

But it did not say whether the flight path tool was one of them.

Image source, PA

Transport Secretary Mark Harper is urging airlines to continue doing all they can to support passengers, following his meeting today with the National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the Civil Aviation Authority, airlines, airports, trade bodies and Border Force.

"I echo the apology offered by Nats to everyone caught up in the disruption following yesterday’s technical issue with air traffic control," he said.

"My priority continues to be making sure passengers get where they need to be as quickly as possible.

"I am grateful to airlines, airports and Border Force for the work being done to get passengers to their destinations and to provide support while they wait.

"Airlines are clear about their responsibilities to their customers, and I stand ready to provide further appropriate support from the government should the industry request it."

Image source, Reuters

EasyJet is saying it's "now operating normally" after technical issues with air traffic control caused massive flight cancellations.

In a statement, the airline says it's going to use larger aircraft on key routes including Faro, Ibiza, Dalaman and Tenerife to provide around 700 additional seats this week.

The company is also offering five "repatriation flights" to London Gatwick Airport over the coming days from Palma and Faro on 30 August, and Tenerife and Enfidha on 31 August, and from Rhodes on 1 September.

"Although this situation was outside of our control, we are sorry for the difficulty this has caused for our customers and remain focused on doing all possible to assist and repatriate them," the statement says.

"Customers will be moved on to repatriation flights and notified directly."

BBC journalist Kevin Pashby is stuck in Gran Canaria in the Canary Islands after his flight was cancelled on Monday.

He told BBC Radio 5Live: "It was grim this time yesterday when we got the notification from our airline.

"Our flight was due to take off at 21:00. It was delayed till 06:30 this morning and then cancelled about half an hour later," he says.

"We were given options to get a refund or to book on to another flight. The next direct flight was not until Sunday. It took us about five hours to find an alternative route home.

"We are hopefully booked on to a flight to Frankfurt tomorrow night. There'll be an overnight stop and then we'll be heading back to Manchester.

"It’s going to take about 16 hours to get back and we’ve had to pay for our flight out of our pocket."

Kevin says he'll try to get his money back once he's back in the UK.

Image source, Kevin Pashby

Andre Rhoden-Paul
BBC News

Image source, Sarah Skellern

Sarah Skellern is one of thousands of passengers caught up in the aftermath of yesterday's flight cancellations, with many unable to return home to the UK or fly abroad for long-booked holidays.

Skellern, from Lancashire, describes the "absolute chaos" at Palma de Mallorca Airport, after her Jet2 flight on Monday was cancelled.

She and her husband Barry, and two boys Toby, 10, and Gabe, eight, had little choice for a bed but the Spanish airport floor.

"The children had a few hours, I had about an hour's sleep and my husband about 10 minutes at best," she says.

The teaching assistant is now hoping to get on a flight to Manchester Airport on Tuesday afternoon, but admits: "We're all exhausted."

Read more stories of people missing weddings, babies sleeping in suitcases and passengers shelling out thousands of pounds on new arrangements here.

Image source, PA Media

A Scottish drama student trying to get home from Asia has had one of the worst journeys we've heard of yet.

Matthew Creed has been working in Hong Kong for the last three years and is trying to reach Edinburgh to visit family.

When he arrived at Hong Kong's airport to embark on the lengthy journey to Edinburgh with a stopover in Doha, Qatar Airways told him his ticket was on "standby".

Sure enough, upon arrival in Doha, Creed learned he no longer had a seat on the flight to Edinburgh.

Qatar then transferred him to a KLM flight to Amsterdam arriving 03:00 on Monday. Upon arrival in the Netherlands, Creed checked the departures board to discover his next flight to Edinburgh had been cancelled too.

At that hour, Creed said there were enormous queues of stranded passengers and "only four or five agents trying to help people".

"Then they just kind of said: 'We're closing all of the desks and everybody needs to find their own accommodation,'" he told the PA news agency.

He has now been booked on a replacement flight from Amsterdam to Edinburgh at 21:50, but Creed says he just feels "frustrated and tired".

Harry Kind from the consumer group Which? has been speaking to the BBC about what rights delayed airline passengers actually have.

"The airlines have a duty of care to basically look after you, until they can get you home, in this situation, where you have a really long delay or a cancellation of a flight," he says.

"And that’s regardless of the cause of that delay, whether it’s the airline’s fault, whether it’s a natural disaster or in this case, a technical fault. It is down to the airlines to get you back.

"It’s worth pointing out, you won’t get compensation – that extra money as an apology, for things going wrong, which you would get if it was the airline’s fault".

Kind adds: "But that doesn’t mean that the airline shouldn’t be providing you with the next convenient trip home".

"So that means re-booking you, re-routing you onto a flight home, even if that means booking a ticket with one of their rivals".

The Department of Transport has given the green light to night flying at the airports it regulates, to help alleviate the backlog in UK flights.

It follows a meeting of the National Air Traffic Service (Nats), the Civil Aviation Authority, airlines, airports, trade bodies and Border Force, chaired by Transport Secretary Mark Harper.

Speaking after the meeting, Harper warned again that the knock-on effects of yesterday’s disruption are likely to continue over the coming days, and said passengers due to travel should check with their airlines before heading to the airport.

Image source, Laura Wood

It's said every cloud has a silver lining - and Laura Wood from Aberdeenshire decided to make the most of her unplanned holiday extension.

Laura, who was on a bank holiday break with friends, was supposed to fly back from Brussels to Manchester yesterday afternoon.

After her flight was cancelled, she managed to rebook for Wednesday, giving her the unexpected opportunity to explore the Belgian beauty spot of Bruges.

"I’ve just tried to make a day of it, because at the end of the day I’d rather be stuck in Bruges than in my airport room," she told the BBC.

"I’m quite fortunate that it’s just two days delayed. There are worse places to be stuck.

"At the end of the day though, I just want home".

Image source, Laura Wood

Image source, Reuters

The National Air Traffic Services (Nats) has "crucial questions to answer about their responsibility for this fiasco", according an air industry body.

Willie Walsh, director general of the International Air Transport Association, called the systems failure "unacceptable", adding that it was "yet another example of why the passenger rights system isn’t fit for purpose".

He says airlines would have to pay large disruption costs.

"The UK’s policy makers should take note. The passenger rights system needs to be rebalanced to be fair for all with effective incentives," he says.

"Until that happens, I fear we will see a continuing failure to improve the reliability, cost efficiency, and environmental performance of air traffic control. The current system does not protect passengers. It hurts them."

Nats has apologised for the systems glitch and says a "thorough investigation is now under way to understand the root cause of what happened".

It's more than 24 hours since National Air Traffic Services (Nats) announced that it had identified and remedied the issues affecting air traffic control. Here's the latest:

• Airlines say they are continuing to experience knock-on effects of yesterday's technical fault with flight delays and cancellations today

• At least 281 flights have been cancelled at the UK's busiest airports, with some disruption to services possible in the coming days
• The exact reason for the air traffic control issue is not yet clear, and Nats has begun an investigation
• The government has ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the glitch
• Thousands of passengers have had their plans disrupted. If your flight is cancelled, you may be entitled to compensation, and you can read our full explainer here

Karen and Mike are stranded in Malaga after their EasyJet flight back to the UK was cancelled yesterday.

The pair have since booked flights with another airline, Iberia, to get home at a cost of €998 (£856) plus further travel costs. They are staying at a friend's apartment.

Karen tells the BBC: “EasyJet just don’t have any representatives at the airport [only check-in staff] and we were told to go onto Manage my Booking [app]. When we did, we couldn’t find any flights for over a week.”

In addition to this, she says other airlines have pushed up prices due to the demand.

The BBC has contacted EasyJet for comment.

"We were at the flight booking desk at the airport and as the agent was booking us a new flight [on Iberia] the price jumped from €699 to €998 as we were stood there," she explains.

Karen says she is now less inclined to travel, saying the experience has left her "reticent" to go anywhere.

Image source, Nats

British Airways has updated its latest advice to customers., external

"If you are due to fly with us on Tuesday 29 August, please do not travel to the airport without checking the status of your flight, as it may be delayed or no longer be operating," the airline says.

British Airways adds that short-haul passengers for today and tomorrow can move their flights free of charge to a later date.

"We are also rebooking customers onto alternative airlines where possible," they say.

BA has extra staff in call centres today so more customers can be helped.

Laurence Blight has been stranded in Benidorm, Spain after his flight was cancelled yesterday.

"It's been a shock, really. We were on the beach, scrolling through TikTok and I saw a video about what has been happening in the UK," Laurence told to the BBC.

Then he and his friends discovered their flight was delayed for five hours. In half an hour, there was another six hours delay. Finally, the flight was cancelled.

"After a couple of hours of crying, laughing and having a few drinks, we thought we needed to book somewhere to stay. All the hotels got wind of this and the prices were just going up and up so we had to book somewhere very quickly," he said.

They managed to find a hotel for last night, and they were supposed be home back in the UK today.

But it hasn't been the case since EasyJet offered them a flight on Friday and a hotel room for only one night.

"We managed to find somewhere to stay for the next three nights but at a cost of nearly a grand."

Image source, PA

There's a warning of "significant delays" for Jet2.com flights going to and from the UK.

They've released a statement saying they had ''no choice'' other than to cancel passenger flights.

''As a result of the disruption, we took the decision to cancel some outbound flights yesterday and this morning," the company says.

"Our teams are working incredibly hard to communicate with, and look after, our customers and they will continue to do so. We have contacted all affected customers to let them know, and they will of course receive a full refund."

"We are extremely sorry to have to take this decision - however the ATC disruption left us with no other choice."

Jet2.com is advising people due to travel today to go to the airport as normal unless they're advised differently, and to monitor flight Information on the Jet2 website.

Paul Clifton
BBC South transport correspondent

Nats controls most aircraft in UK airspace, handling more than 7,000 flights a day – or 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers a year.

It’s a public-private partnership, 49%-owned by the government, with a consortium of airlines as the other major shareholder.

Nats operates from Swanwick in Hampshire and Prestwick in Ayrshire.

The air traffic control glitch which sparked this disruption happened at Swanwick, which is responsible for some 200,000 square miles of airspace.

When a failure occurs, the first thing controllers do is increase the separation between aircraft, to maintain safety.

Aircraft were held on the ground across Europe, to enable flights already in the air to be spread out.

Air traffic control has been working normally today, but planes and pilots are out of place.

Many aircrew had reached their working limits during yesterday's delays, and had to go off-shift.

Like pilots, the working hours of air traffic controllers are tightly regulated to avoid fatigue. They are not allowed to do overtime. So it could take a couple of days for services to return to normal.

Disappointed traveller Harriet Kirk was due to fly from Manchester Airport to Paris with Easyjet with her mum, and was excited about the prospect of a holiday.

The cancellation of their flight cut their three-day trip to two days - so they called their city break off.

"We had to make the hard decision of processing a refund," she told the BBC.

Their trip cost just over £900, and they've been offered £100 so far. Harriet also says people at the airport weren't kept informed.

"We were given no updates via the intercom, and despite most cancelled flights being Easyjet, the airline had no representatives for hours in the airport. The number given to call was also a dead end," she says.

A spokesperson for Easyjet has told us: "We have been doing everything we can to minimise the impact of the disruption, providing customers on cancelled flights with information on their options to transfer their flight free of charge or receive a refund, and Ms Kirk will be refunded for her flights in full".

"While this was outside of our control, we apologise for the difficulty this has caused".

Air traffic control service Nats says that their systems are operating as normal and they are working to clear the backlog of flights.

"We know a great many people have had their travel plans disrupted and are still facing the impact of delays and cancellations. Our systems are operating as normal and we are working with the airlines and airports to get people where they need to go and clear the backlog as quickly as possible," a statement said.

It added that an investigation has started to “understand the root cause of what happened."