More than 100,000 passengers hit by flight cancellations following IT crash problems

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Many of an estimated 100,000 passengers who had flights cancelled at the weekend are still trying to reach their destinations.

More than 100 cancellations on Sunday, mostly on easyJet to and from London Gatwick, rounded off what was supposed to be the busiest weekend of the year – but ended up as a shambles for many.

Friday’s IT outage caused severe problems for UK airports and airlines, and any hope of a recovery on Saturday and Sunday was dashed by a combination of severe weather in parts of Continental Europe and air-traffic control restrictions.

Monday morning has dawned with fresh cancellations, though not on the scale of the disruption at the weekend.

All disrupted passengers on flights to/from Europe and on British or European airlines anywhere in the world are entitled to be rebooked as soon as possible, and provided with hotels and meals at the cancelling airline’s expense.

This is the picture at the four big UK airports.

British Airways has cancelled flights from Heathrow to Bologna, Lyon and Rome. Lufthansa’s first flight to Munich is not operating, causing problems for those with connections. American Airlines cancelled an overnight flight from Miami to Heathrow and today’s return to Florida will not be going.

After at least 34 easyJet departures from Gatwick were cancelled yesterday – together with the same number of inbound flights – today that figure is just three. Passengers to Bilbao, Belfast City and Berlin have all been told their planes are not operating. The airline says the Belfast flight was cancelled because of a technical issue, but has not given a reason for the other cancellations.

Many passengers arrived in the early hours of the morning rather than on Sunday night after delays built up, with one Ryanair flight from Barcelona five hours late. No cancellations so far on Monday, though.

The only outbound cancellation is a SunExpress departure to Dalaman in Turkey. But there are significant inbound cancellations after flights didn’t leave yesterday, including Virgin Atlantic from Las Vegas and Tui from Montego Bay.

Source: independent.co.uk