Flights out and in of Britain shall be disrupted for days, the U.Okay. authorities mentioned on Tuesday, after a technical situation with the nation’s air visitors management system left hundreds of passengers stranded overseas or dealing with extreme delays.

Around 150 flights departing Britain and 130 arriving have been canceled on Tuesday, about 5 p.c of the entire scheduled, in response to Cirium, an aviation analytics firm, compounding journey woes for British holidaymakers after greater than a thousand flights have been canceled the day earlier than.

The hassle got here at a very busy time for vacationers in Britain, a lot of whom have been returning dwelling from summer season trip or lengthy weekends as a result of Monday was a public vacation within the nation.

“The timing was not at all helpful for people,” Mark Harper, the federal government minister chargeable for transport coverage, advised the BBC on Tuesday morning. “It’s disrupted thousands of people. Lots of flights were canceled yesterday because of the imperative to keep the system working safely, and it is going to take some days to get completely everybody back to where they should be.”

He added that the federal government’s technical specialists had concluded that the episode was not a cyberattack.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Service, which runs air visitors management, mentioned on Monday {that a} failure of the automated system that processes aircraft routes meant that, for a number of hours, flight plans needed to be entered manually.

When air visitors management points come up, the precedence is to soundly land planes which can be already within the air, specialists mentioned, forcing a whole bunch of flights to be briefly grounded or canceled. They added that the delays continued on Tuesday partially as a result of plane and crews have been out of place.

Juliet Kennedy, the operations director of the air visitors service, apologized in a video on Monday evening, and added that “it will take some time for flights to return to normal.” She mentioned the corporate would completely examine what had brought on the glitch.

Passengers have been urged to verify the standing of their flight with their airline earlier than touring to the airport.