British Airways flights out of Gatwick and Heathrow were grounded yesterday as a result of a “major IT failure”.

However a spokeswoman for the airlines said that today’s flights between Bermuda and London are expected to operate normally.

“We are extremely sorry for the significant levels of disruption caused to customers and understand how frustrating their experiences have been,” the spokeswoman said.

“Passengers who were affected are requested to contact 1-800-AIRWAYS to rebook their flights.”

The airline has apologised for what it described as a “global system outage,” saying it was hard at work at resolving the issue.

An official statement released yesterday said: “We have experienced a major IT system failure that is causing very severe disruption to our flight operations worldwide.

“Following the major IT system failure experienced earlier today, with regret we have had to cancel all flights leaving from Heathrow and Gatwick for the rest of today, Saturday, May 27.

“We are working hard to get our customers who were due to fly today on to the next available flights over the course of the rest of the weekend. Those unable to fly will be offered a full refund.

“The system outage has also affected our call centres and our website but we will update customers as soon as we are able to.

“Most long-haul flights due to land in London tomorrow (Sunday, May 28) are expected to arrive as normal, and we are working to restore our services from tomorrow, although some delays and disruption may continue into Sunday.

“We will continue to provide information on ba.com, Twitter and through airport communication channels.

“We will be updating the situation via the media regularly throughout the day.

“We are extremely sorry for the inconvenience this is causing our customers during this busy holiday period.”