Air traffic control issues cause Cardiff Airport cancellations

Holidaymakers are stuck on the tarmac across the UK and abroad

Flights at Cardiff Airport have been hit by cancellations after air traffic control faced technical issues.

Holidaymakers have been stuck on the tarmac in the UK and abroad. The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said restrictions had been applied for safety.

It said the problem, affecting its "ability to automatically process flight plans", had been resolved.

Cardiff Airport's website listed six flights as cancelled.

Passenger Daniel Hopkins was waiting there to board a flight to Tenerife.

Mr Hopkins, from Cardiff, said travellers had been told little about the situation.

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"We've just been told that our flight won't be leaving until five o'clock at the minimum but we really don't know," he said.

A TUI rep had contacted him on social media to apologise for the delay, he said. They told him the flight, set to leave at 13:45 BST, had been placed in a queue.

At Cardiff Airport Daniel Hopkins was waiting to board a flight to Tenerife

Cardiff Airport boss, Spencer Birns, said: "It is disappointing that our customers are experiencing delays due to technical issues with UK Air Traffic Control.

"We have been advised that they are working hard to resolve the situation. We advise our customers to speak to their airline for the latest update regarding their travel."

Several airports across the UK, and airlines including Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizz Air, Loganair and Aer Lingus, all warned passengers of delays or cancellations to flights.

Speaking from a plane delayed in Rome, Caerphilly estate agent Simon Morgan was waiting to return to Birmingham airport.

He said he and his partner Kat were "trying to be upbeat in a 35C tin can".

"Our pilot has said there's no point in going to hotels just in case they fix it," Mr Morgan said.

Simon Morgan and partner Kat said they were stuck on a plane in Rome

NATS said it was working with airlines and airports to manage flights affected.

"Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system's performance as we return to normal operations," a spokesman said.

"The flight planning issue affected the system's ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions."

'Sincerely sorry'

NATS added that its priority was to keep flights safe.

"We are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing," the spokesman said.

It had earlier stressed that "UK airspace is not closed, we have had to apply air traffic flow restrictions which ensures we can maintain safety".

A WhatsApp message received by British Airways crews, and seen by BBC News, suggested while flights were still able to take off and land, the air traffic control system was having to carry out some processes manually, causing "significant delays".

The airline's operations centre was also identifying "suitable diversion airfields if required" - which was necessary given some flights approaching UK airports would only have a finite amount of fuel to hold in the air before they need to land.

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