Dozens more flights were cancelled at airports across England today as children were left ‘very upset’ as services recover from last Friday’s major global IT outage.
Ten flights were axed at Heathrow today as well as 11 at London City, ten at Gatwick and six at Manchester as airlines battled to try to get schedules back to normal.
A total of 38 flights were cancelled at England’s airports throughout the day, with British Airways and easyJet making up the majority with 18 and 10 respectively.
Arrivals from European cities such as Rome, Berlin and Zurich were among those axed as were others from Jamaica and US cities including Las Vegas and New York.
Among those suffering disruption today was Rich Rhodes whose 1pm BA flight from Heathrow to Miami was axed. He tweeted: ‘Got an email saying it’s cancelled and I’ve been rebooked, but no trace on new flight. Travelling with seven-year-old, help!’
A further passenger said their 6.05am Tui flight from Gatwick to Thessaloniki was ‘cancelled upon checking in suitcases’. He added: ‘Three very upset children at 4am.’
Also impacted was Giuli Cavaliere from London who posted on X: ‘EasyJet, our flight has been cancelled two hours before departure. There’s no flight today and for some reason we can’t book a flight tomorrow. We also can’t contact you on your customer service. What kind of a service is this? What about the duty of care to customers?’
It comes as NHS England warned of ‘delays’ to services but insisted that patients having appointments this week ‘should continue to attend unless told not to’.
Passengers queue at check-in gates for British Airways flights at London Gatwick this morning
Departing passengers face a long wait for check-in this morning at London Gatwick Airport
Airline passengers wait in a queue at London Heathrow Airport’s Terminal Three this morning
It comes after a flawed update rolled out by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many services offline around the world on Friday, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some healthcare systems.
A fix was deployed for a bug in the update, which affected equipment running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as CrowdStrike’s chief executive George Kurtz said it would take ‘some time’ for systems to be fully restored.
The British Medical Association (BMA) warned yesterday that normal GP service ‘cannot be resumed immediately’ after the outage caused a ‘considerable backlog’.
The trade union for doctors said GPs would ‘need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend’, adding that NHS England should ‘make clear to patients’ this was the case.
The BMA said its GP committee would continue to talk to NHS England and patient record system supplier EMIS to secure a ‘better system of IT back-up’ to ensure the ‘disaster’ was not repeated.
Across England, GP surgeries reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records last Friday as their EMIS system went down.
An NHS spokesperson said: ‘Systems are now back online, and patients with an NHS appointment this week should continue to attend unless told not to.
‘Thanks to the hard work of NHS staff throughout this incident we are hoping to keep further disruption to a minimum, however there still may be some delays as services recover, particularly with GPs needing to rebook appointments, so please bear with us.
‘It’s important that patients attend appointments as normal unless told otherwise. You can contact your GP in the usual way, or use your local pharmacy, NHS 111 online or call 111 for urgent health advice.’
Dr David Wrigley, deputy chairman of GPC England, the representative body for GPs at the BMA, said: ‘Friday was one of the toughest single days in recent times for GPs across England. Without a clinical IT system many were forced to return to pen and paper to be able to serve their patients.
‘While GPs and their teams worked hard to look after as many as they could, without access to the information they needed much of the work has had to be shifted into the coming week.
‘GPs have been pulling out all the stops this weekend to deal with the effects of Friday’s catastrophic loss of service and, as their IT systems come back online, we thank them and their staff for their hard work under exceptionally trying circumstances.
‘We also thank patients for bearing with general practice in this unprecedented situation.’
Dr Wrigley added: ‘The temporary loss of the EMIS patient record system has meant a considerable backlog.
‘Even if we could guarantee it could be fully fixed on Monday, GPs would still need time to catch up from lost work over the weekend, and NHSE (National Health Service England) should make clear to patients that normal service cannot be resumed immediately.
‘The BMA’s GP committee will continue our dialogue with both EMIS and NHSE, both to make sure that the coming week can be used to recover as quickly as possible and to urgently work on securing a better system of IT back-up so that this disaster is not repeated in future.’
Microsoft said CrowdStrike’s update affected 8.5million Windows devices.
Passengers in the South Terminal at London Gatwick Airport last Friday amid the IT outage
Passengers wait at Edinburgh Airport last Friday as widespread IT outages affected airlines
Estimating the impact of the update, Microsoft said it had affected less than 1 per cent of all Windows machines.
‘While the percentage was small, the broad economic and societal impacts reflect the use of CrowdStrike by enterprises that run many critical services,’ the firm said in a statement.
‘This incident demonstrates the interconnected nature of our broad ecosystem – global cloud providers, software platforms, security vendors and other software vendors and customers.
‘It’s also a reminder of how important it is for all of us across the tech ecosystem to prioritise operating with safe deployment and disaster recovery using the mechanisms that exist.’
CrowdStrike’s Mr Kurtz apologised, saying he is ‘deeply sorry’ and made clear it was ‘not a security or cyber incident’.
Passengers queue at Birmingham Airport last Friday amid the widespread IT outage
Passengers wait at Heathrow Airport last Friday as widespread IT outages affected airlines
In a technical statement, CrowdStrike said a ‘sensor configuration’ had ‘triggered a logic error’ which the company said had been corrected.
Airports across the UK, including Gatwick, Heathrow, Manchester and Belfast said passengers should check with airlines for any delays or cancellations before travelling over the weekend.
Some 207 flights, equating to 6.7 per cent of all scheduled UK departures, were axed on Friday, with others delayed, while 201 flights due to land in the UK were cancelled.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said 6,855 flights, or 6.2 per cent of all those scheduled, were cancelled globally on Friday.
It added that 1,639 flights had been cancelled globally as of 10am on Saturday, including 23 flights departing from UK airports, equating to 0.9 per cent of all scheduled UK departures, as well as 25 arrivals into the UK.
Passengers queue at London Gatwick Airport last Friday amid the global IT outage
Commuters at London Euston railway station last Friday during the global IT outage
On Saturday the Port of Dover said it was dealing with ‘hundreds of displaced’ airport passengers and urged customers to ensure they had a booking before arrival.
Transport Secretary Louise Haigh said on Saturday afternoon that the IT systems of UK airports and train operators were ‘back up and working as normal’, but ‘some delays and a small number of cancelled flights’ were expected.
Professor Ciaran Martin, the former chief executive of the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), said on the same day that ‘the worst’ of the outage was over but countries would ‘have to learn to cope’ with future flaws.
The NCSC said affected organisations should ‘put in place vendor mitigations’, adding it was also warning about ‘an increase in related phishing’ as ‘opportunistic malicious actors seek to take advantage of the situation’.
Passengers stranded for 50 HOURS at Corfu Airport amid ‘nightmare’
Tui passengers were left stranded at Corfu Airport after the global IT outage sparked a 50-hour delay ‘nightmare’.
Holidaymakers hoping to jet back to Manchester are desperate to return home after being sent a number of emails outlining sudden cancellations to their flight back.
One passenger, who had travelled to the Greek island with their mother, was due to fly back to Manchester at 2:20pm on Friday afternoon.
Passengers stranded at Corfu Airport in Greece as they try to get back to Manchester
But yesterday afternoon they were still sitting in the departures lounge and said they had been left completely in the dark about when their rescheduled flight would depart.
They say they were told to book their own hotels for two nights after their initial TOM2519 flight was cancelled on Friday – but 50 hours later they were still waiting to hear whether the plane will even leave the runway.
They claimed that some passengers, who couldn’t afford another last minute expense of booking accommodation, had spent two gruelling nights sleeping in the airport.
The passenger, who asked to remain anonymous said: ‘Our flight was due to fly at 2.20pm on Friday back to Manchester. They picked us up from the hotel and when we got to the airport, there were huge queues, it was chaos.
‘It was horrendous, there were people everywhere. Some had to stand outside in 35C heat because the airport was so busy. Everyone was queuing because the flights were all delayed.
‘They told us about the IT issues and that it was a global issue, so we stayed on the transfer coach for three hours. We finally got into the airport and there was a lot of waiting around – but our flight still wasn’t on the departures board.
‘Eventually we got an email saying the flight was cancelled completely and that accommodation was being arranged, but when we got to the Tui desk, they told us they couldn’t find us a hotel because there were so many guests and the island was at capacity, and that we had to sort it ourselves.
‘We booked a package holiday and this should’ve been sorted. All these passengers were on booking.com finding random rooms and hotels where we could with our own money. A few young girls that had no savings or money in the bank to book somewhere had to sleep in the airport.’
Along with her mother, the pair were lucky enough to secure a hotel for Friday night, believing they would be on the next flight home the following day.
However, passengers later received another email from Tui, saying that due to being ‘severely impacted’ by the global IT issue, the airline was ‘not able to operate a flight back to the UK’ due to the ‘scale of disruption’ on Saturday.
The email stated: ‘We absolutely understand this is not the end of your holiday you would expect and apologise again for the impact this has had.’
A number of passengers were once again forced to book other hotels at their own expense. The airline has said that they will ‘reimburse reasonable costs’ incurred by passengers.
On Saturday evening, passengers hoping to get back to Manchester then received a further email from Tui, with the airline informing them that they were ‘finalising details’ and would provide an update later that evening on their plans to fly them home.
At around 3am on Sunday, a further message was received, confirming that the estimated departure time out of Corfu would be 12pm later that day. It was later confirmed that the flight had been rescheduled for 5.25pm from Corfu – 51 hours late.
The woman said: ‘The emails have been terrible. We came today to check in at 9am, then at 11:30am we are told it was delayed again. It has been 50 hours now and we still don’t know what’s happening.
‘Everyone is just miserable and angry. It’s been a nightmare. People have work tomorrow. My mum works for the NHS and was like: ‘What am I going to do?’. People will be losing a day in work and have commitments, will they pay our wages?’
The airline has been contacted for comment about this specific incident involving Manchester passengers being stranded in Corfu.
The latest statement shared by Tui on social media said: ‘Following the global IT issue impacting businesses around the world, we would like to apologise to everyone affected.
‘Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, the impact to our systems has meant that our flight programming continues to suffer delays and cancellations.
‘We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this is. We ask that all TUI customers due to travel this weekend regularly check the Travel Information page of the TUI website for the latest updates. Your TUI Team.’