Tens of thousands of Brits could be refused compensation after yesterday’s Air Traffic misery, with airlines expected to argue that the delays were ‘out of their control’.

Holidaymakers have been warned not to travel where possible with the chaos set to continue into the week, despite the seven-hour ‘network failure’ that left passengers stranded being ‘remedied’ on Monday afternoon.

Some 1,200 flights were grounded and cancelled, with several more delayed, after Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it experienced ‘technical issues’, which meant Flight plans had to be input manually by controllers.

The mayhem happened on one of the busiest days of the year, when more than a million people were due to fly out of or land in the UK.

Travel expert Simon Calder said today that some 200,000 people were waking up this morning stranded, and that a further 200 flights were being cancelled, with many aircraft and crews out of position.

Despite the widespread disruption, however, compensation is unlikely to be offered to those affected because air traffic control faults are classified as ‘extraordinary circumstances’.

Transport Secretary Mark Harper confirmed airlines have a responsibility to get people back on a flight home or pay for them to be accommodated, but didn’t say that carriers would need to reimburse them further for the disruption.

He told GB News: ‘First of all, I just want to reiterate what the National Air Traffic Services said yesterday, to apologise obviously for the disruption that everyone’s had yesterday.

‘The system was fixed yesterday afternoon and things are getting back to normal but there’s obviously some disruption that’s going to continue today for people, and I know thousands of people have been impacted.

‘Airlines will be stepping up, I hope, to their responsibilities to make sure that they get people back home, get them on an alternative flight and deal with food and drink and accommodation in the meantime.’

Mr Harper added that the Government does not believe the disruption was caused by a cybersecurity incident, but there will be an independent review.

*Are you affected by the UK air traffic control shutdown? Email your story, with photos, to [email protected] 

‘This was a technical fault. We do not think this was a cybersecurity incident,’ he said.

‘And what will happen now with an incident of this magnitude is there will be an independent review.

‘The Civil Aviation Authority will be putting together a report in the coming days, which obviously I will take a look at to see whether there are lessons to learn for the future, to see whether we can reduce the impact of this again.

‘It’s nearly a decade since there was a significant issue like this. We want to make sure it doesn’t happen again, because of all the disruption that’s been caused to passengers across the country.’

Meanwhile, a rail operator is offering free train travel to people whose flights have been moved or diverted to a different airport.

A spokesperson said:  ‘LNER is offering free Standard Class travel for those affected and for anyone whose flight back to the UK has resulted in them landing at a different airport, or who is travelling on a different date than originally planned, meaning their journey home will involve a trip along the LNER route.

‘Customers will be asked to present their airline ticket or boarding pass to make use of this offer, which will run across the 28th and 29th of August 2023.’

In an extraordinary twist to the fiasco last night, sources told The Times that the fault may have been caused by an incorrectly filed plan by a French airline. MailOnline has contacted NATS for comment.

Passengers have been warned that they could face ‘days of disruptions’, which could last until Friday. An easyJet pilot told passengers he had never seen a failure on this scale in 20 years of flying.

It’s understood officials are aware of what caused the outage but not how it disabled the system.