Jordan North and Helen Flanagan impacted by air traffic control fault

Burnley’s Jordan North, former Westholme School pupil Helen Flanagan and Blackpool’s Christine McGuinness have all taken to social media to explain more about their experience.

Holidaymakers were hit by bank holiday travel delays, which started on Monday (August 28), when a UK air traffic control failure meant flight plans had to be inputted manually by controllers.

Jordan North said get me home after being stranded at Malaga Airport for hours (Image: Instagram/@jordannorth1)

By Monday afternoon, 232 flights departing UK airports had been cancelled and 271 arriving flights, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Radio 1 presenter Jordan was stranded at Malaga Airport for “many hours”. To make matters worse, he also complained that the terminal bar had ran out of beer.

Speaking to his 795,000 Instagram followers he said: “Delayed at Malaga Airport for possibly ‘many hours’ and they have ran out of beer at the terminal.”

The 33-year-old eventually made his flight and posted a picture of himself, seven hours later, captioned “get me home.”

Coronation Street actress Helen had to entertain three children after her flight to Crete was delayed and later cancelled.

Helen Flanagan with her children after her flight to Crete was delayed and later cancelled (Image: Instagram/@hjgflanagan)

She posted a picture of herself on the airport floor blowing bubbles and giving the children toys and activities to keep them entertained.

Christine McGuinness, ex-wife of Bolton comedian Paddy McGuinness, has been left stranded on her holiday with her children. She has “no idea” when she will be able to get a flight home.

She said: “Stranded due to network failures across the UK airports. No idea when we can get a flight home but I feel very lucky we found a place to stay and I get extra time to make more memories with my babies.

“I trust in the universe. I had jobs booked all week, a million things to do at home getting ready to prep for ‘back to school’.

“But we were meant to stay for longer, we have more memories to make, time with my babies is priceless.

“I actually feel very grateful. We are not home but we have everything we need.”

The current flight disruption is predicted to last “for days” and transport secretary Mark Harper said it was the worst incident of its kind in ‘nearly a decade’

Mark told GB News: “This was a technical fault. We do not think this was a cybersecurity incident.

“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.”

Source – INDIA TV