Some London flights have been diverted as far away as Edinburgh due to the disruption over the past day.

According to one X user, a flight from New York to Heathrow was diverted to Edinburgh yesterday evening - with operator Jet Blue allegedly leaving passengers to “fend for yourselves.”

Issues have been exacerbated by hotels being fully booked, leaving hundreds stranded with nowhere to go and no flights available in the coming days.

Wizz Air’s managing director said there are “serious questions about the resilience” of the UK’s air traffic control service.

Yvonne Moynihan told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “We had 24 cancellations yesterday and over 21 other flights that were disrupted with long-term delays.

“So that’s over 10,000 passengers coming in and out of London have had major disruption.”

She added: “This is now the third time that we have had an air traffic control failure, and during the peak period as well. So major questions need to be asked

“There are serious questions about the resilience of this system.”

Asked whether NATS’ chief executive Martin Rolfe should consider resigning, Ms Moynihan said: “I think in any industry, when you’ve had three failures, you need to consider that three strikes and you’re out.

“So I think it’s certainly something that he needs to look at.”

She added: “A third time and a third excuse is not enough anymore.”

More from NATS CEO Martin Rolfe.

He has apologised for the widespread disruption to flights since Tuesday, telling the Today Programme: “Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems.

“We never want them to. We always hope they won’t, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.”

He added: “I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service, both from a safety perspective and from a resilience perspective.

“NATS was actually a partial privatisation 25 years ago, and since that point, it’s had access to funding.

“We’ve invested way more than a billion in technology over that time, our service has consistently improved. Our safety is consistently improved from a very good base.

“But all of those things don’t detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.”

Discussing the response to Tuesday’s incident, Mr Rolfe said: “We had everybody on site, everybody was in the right place. We had all the engineers in place. We had our various partners from software industries and so on all on hand.

“So this was resolved as quickly as it could be, but within the limits of making sure that it all stayed safe.”

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning, NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said there will be a “very, very thorough investigation” into the technical problem that has caused widespread disruption to flights.

He did, however, rule out a cyber attack as the cause.

He said: “We have at this point ruled out cyber, we don’t believe it was a cyber attack.

“My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today.

“And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.

“What I will say is I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an incident happen more than once, so this will be something different that we’ve never seen in 50 years of operation.”

The Government has apologised to passengers caught up in the flights chaos in Britain.

It is also demanding answers from the head of the National Air Traffic Service, Martin Rolfe, over how things could have gone so badly wrong.

Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC Breakfast: "First of all, I want to apologise to all of the passengers who have faced disruption.

"This is frankly unacceptable. It was a problem at the National Air Traffic Service, but we can't have this happen again.

"The Transport Secretary is calling in the head of the NATs, the National Air Traffic Service this morning to get answers to this.

"We've got to have our airports running smoothly and properly without those problems, and that is what the Transport Secretary will be asking for from the head of the National Air Traffic Service."

Gatwick Airport have sent an update to passengers this morning amid the flight disruption.

In a post on X, the airport wrote: “Flights have now resumed from London Gatwick. However, we still anticipate that it will take time for our operations to fully return to normal.

“Passengers should continue to check with their airlines for more information regarding their flights.”

Josie Donoghue was among the thousands facing disruption on Tuesday.

She had to get off her flight to Ireland after spending three hours on the runway at Gatwick.

Ms Donoghue said: “Getting through that airport was like trying to get out of Alcatraz. We were trapped in there. We were told we couldn’t get out until the flights were cancelled, and then eventually they allowed us to get out.

“It’s just an absolute nightmare down there, it’s the only word I can use to describe it.”

Amanda Dick-Cleland, 63, had been due to fly from Gatwick to Ibiza at around 3.50pm yesterday.

Her flight was cancelled, and Ms Dick-Cleland has been offered an alternative British Airways flight, but it is not until Saturday.

She said the trip to Ibiza was to celebrate a friend’s birthday on Friday.

Ms Dick-Cleland was travelling with a friend who had checked her bag in at around 6pm.

She told PA: “She’s 82, sitting on the carousel waiting for them to bring her bag back.

“She’s been there for two hours.”

He told Sky News: “There are going to be dozens of cancellations in the morning of flights coming into Heathrow because, basically, the flights didn’t go out tonight.”

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights, while British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.