‘Absolute chaos’ after Birmingham Airport TUI flights cancelled

Another passenger, who did not want to be named, told the BBC they were waiting at the gate for about four hours before the pilot told them that “they didn’t have enough staff to send a plane off.”

He described the terminal as “like a greenhouse” and “very, very hot,” and said passengers were worried about others who were diabetic or had medical conditions.

“It’s a stressful situation, the pilot was saying it’s a crew thing. They couldn’t get enough crew, before they changed their tune and said now it’s an IT issue,” he said.

Multiple companies including banks, media outlets, train stations and airlines were among those affected on Friday morning when the global IT outage affected computer systems worldwide.

A Birmingham Airport spokesperson said on Friday that the majority of flights were “operating as normal” during the IT outage but some check-ins had experienced delays which were being processed by colleagues.

In a statement, Tui told the BBC its overall service level was “heavily impacted” following the global IT outage and it was “deeply sorry” for the inconvenience it had caused to customers.

“Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, an essential system needed to run our airline operation remained unstable late into last night,” a spokesperson said.

“We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure,” they added.

“We would like to reassure customers due to return home from their holiday that inbound flights will take place and we will update them directly when we have more information.”

Passengers travelling this weekend have also been advised to regularly check the Tui website for updates.