More than 2,000 UK flights were cancelled after a system failure at Nats, the national air traffic control provider, plunged airports into chaos over two days. Although Nats fixed the technical fault within hours on Tuesday, the knock-on effects left hundreds of thousands of passengers facing delays and cancellations into Wednesday, prompting Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to be given a week to explain the cause of the failure.

Passengers described gruelling ordeals, including waiting seven hours on a stationary plane at Heathrow before finding "pandemonium" at baggage reclaim and lost luggage, while one 71-year-old artist was diverted to Edinburgh after a 14-hour flight from Tokyo and had to pay £500 for last-minute accommodation. Another traveller was stranded in Marrakech with no advance warning of his cancelled flight and faced unexpected hotel costs, while British Airways issued a mass apology email and automatically rebooked some passengers on flights up to 48 hours later.