A air traffic outage in Britain caused mayhem yesterday for flights in and out of the country.

National Air Traffic Services warned of a failure that forced air traffic restrictions across Britain.

Although the outage was fixed within several hours, thousands of travellers were grounded as airspace was closed. Britain-bound travellers in Bermuda were among them.

A spokeswoman for British Airways said: “Like all airlines using UK airspace, our flights have been severely disrupted as a result of a major issue experienced by Nats’ Air Traffic Control.

“While Nats has now resolved the issue, it has created significant and unavoidable delays and cancellations.

“We’re working as hard as possible to get customers whose flights have been affected on their way again and have apologised for the huge inconvenience caused.”

The airline advised travellers with short-haul flights scheduled to leave yesterday not to travel unless their flight is shown to be operating.

They also reminded customers who are travelling today and tomorrow that they can move their flight to a later date free of charge, subject to availability.

Customers who had their flights cancelled are being rebooked on to other BA flights and alternative carriers.

Skyport, the owner of LF Wade Airport, was asked how many travellers were forced to stay grounded, but did not respond in time for publication.

British Airways BA 159 was expected to arrive in Bermuda about 75 minutes late last night.