More flights grounded due to glitch

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Travel insurance firms are expecting to be inundated with calls after British Airways was forced to cancel more flights due to the knock-on effect of Thursday's air traffic control computer glitch.

The axed flights were at Heathrow airport and were confined to a small number of domestic and European short-haul routes. BA had borne the brunt of the 35 flight cancellations from Heathrow on Thursday evening.

A BA spokesman said: "Some of our planes are in the wrong location due to the cancellations, but the flights we've had to cancel are all on multi-frequency routes and we are not experiencing any delays to other services."

Luton and Cardiff were among the airports hit by the fault, which happened just before 4pm at the main Swanwick control centre in Hampshire run by air traffic control company Nats.

At Cardiff, passengers travelling to Belfast, Newcastle and Edinburgh saw their flights cancelled and others faced delays of up to two-and-a-half hours.

The computer problem led Nats to restrict the number of planes entering UK airspace as well as those taking off from a number of major airports.

Airports affected included Gatwick, Stansted and London City, while about a dozen flights were cancelled at Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen airports.

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