Flights were grounded and passengers faced hours of delays at Gatwick Airport on Saturday following a system outage.

Travellers reported planes being stuck on the tarmac at the West Sussex airport after problems emerged around 8am this morning.

Dozens of departures and arrivals appeared to be affected, with football fans travelling to Premier League matches among those experiencing issues.

Gatwick Airport has apologised, saying the delays were the result of an “outage” to a National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system.

It comes just months after widespread disruption affected thousands of passengers at airports in August, with NATS chief executive then blaming a “one in 15 million” technical glitch.

Danny Bellringer, 45, was travelling from Dublin with fellow Brighton fans for the game against Burnley when the group was told their Aer Lingus flight would be delayed by at least two hours.

The oil rig worker said: “There’s not a huge amount we can do – we’re kind of used to it when travelling over from Ireland to the UK for games, (it) very rarely goes completely smoothly.”

Padraic Mac Aonghusa, 24, said fellow passengers on his Ryanair flight from Dublin were “angry” when the pilot announced there would be a delay due to the issues at Gatwick.

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A London Gatwick spokesperson said: “There was an outage to a local NATS system earlier this morning which has now been rectified.

“Some passengers may experience delays. We apologise for any inconvenience.”

The spokesperson added that one flight was cancelled and two were diverted from Gatwick.

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