They will try to get home today, with alternative arrangements made for their travel by air or sea.
The island’s tourist accommodation was understood to be completely full yesterday at what is always a busy time of the year.
Guernsey Airport’s emergency accommodation plan was activated after flights were affected throughout the afternoon. Apart from Jersey and Alderney flights, only one flight from Manchester was able to land between 3 and 6pm and the only flight to leave the island from early afternoon was the evening Southampton service, which left 90 minutes late at about 8pm and returned shortly after 10.
The airport said it expected to see some knock-on disruption to flights today as as airports across the UK tried to recover operations.
Airport director Richard Thomasson said his teams had worked throughout the afternoon with the airlines and other partners to help affected passengers.
‘We have seen huge disruption to travel across the UK today as a result of this technical fault. Although it is believed to have been fixed, we expect there may be some knock-on impact tomorrow after hundreds of flights were cancelled today. Our teams will be working with the airlines to minimise the disruption as best we can, and get things back to normal as quickly as possible,’ he said.
‘My thanks go to them, and to Visit Guernsey, the States emergency planning officers, and all our other partners for their help in assisting all those passengers who have been affected.’
Five departures and five arrivals were cancelled yesterday.
National Air Traffic Services, which is responsible for the UK’s air traffic control systems, said that it had identified an issue with its flight processing system. Some flights still left and arrived but arrivals were compromised at some airports due to a lack of parking space for aircraft.
Gatwick was among the UK airports affected worst affected as hundreds of flights were cancelled across the UK, impacting tens of thousands of passengers.
Nats boss Martin Rolfe apologised and said there would be a full investigation into what had gone wrong. Resolving the issue had ‘taken longer than hoped’, he admitted.
Aurigny had to rearrange hundreds of flights as a result of the disruption, and it means that some Gatwick passengers are today flying to the island from other airports, including Bristol.
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