'I was stuck on a plane for six hours - then the flight was cancelled'

Passengers have been describing the chaos at London Stansted Airport after air traffic control issues caused major disruption and saw flights cancelled.

An estimated 250,000 people had their travel plans disrupted on Tuesday, with 1,750 flights axed.

Nats, the air traffic control provider, blamed a technical glitch and its boss Martin Rolfe apologised, admitting resolving the issue had taken "longer than hoped".

Katie Haines, 20, from Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, said: "I've never seen anything like it, everybody just stood around. Nobody knowing where to go, what to do. Even the staff of most airlines didn't have a clue what to do."

Haines was set to depart for Greece at 12:55 BST. She eventually left Stansted Airport at about 22:00.

She told BBC Essex presenter Sonia Watson how she and other passengers had to wait for six hours on the aircraft without communication or food before the flight was cancelled amid the chaos.

Haines said it was six hours before the pilot spoke to them.

"There was literally no news from the airline on what was happening, [they] just kept saying every hour there's going to be increased delays," she explained.

"Nobody had been offered sort of food, we just had a little glass of water each. Everybody was getting quite hungry, you had the elderly, you had children on there that were getting quite restless."

She added that her mother - who has the immune condition, coeliac disease - found it "very difficult" to find anything gluten-free, forcing her to eat her personal supply in her hand luggage.

Another traveller, Steve, was due to fly from Stansted to Frankfurt for a business trip, leaving at 12:40.

The recruitment consultant from Cambridge said his aircraft was still stuck next to the runway more than four hours later.

"[We were given] no information the whole time, we asked for some food or drink were told they weren't allowed to give us any water and that they had locked all the water away.

"The most infuriating thing is I appreciate that what's happened is out of Ryanair's hands but lack of preparation or contingency and just being able to offer us something as straightforward and reasonable as water seems a bit disappointing really."

He said he eventually left without his luggage as there were "hundreds of people around one carousel".

Airport worker Daniel Turner arrived at Stansted at 04:00 on Wednesday but had to step over customers asleep on the concourse floor.

"They would have stayed in there all night so a lot of them were stressed, and those that weren't stressed were asleep," he said.

The WH Smith worker left his home in Braintree, Essex, in the early hours of the morning and opened the shop to find an immediate flood of customers.

"Because everyone was entitled to delayed flight vouchers they bought all of our fresh stock of sandwiches and meal deals, so I've come in this morning, opened up my store and all the sandwiches were gone," he said.

"They were just glad to be able to get some food because a lot of the places were shut overnight and at four o'clock everything starts to reopen again."

Cheryl Mullender was due to leave Palma Airport at 21:00 on Tuesday, but it did not take off until 01:30.

The 58-year-old from Great Baddow, near Chelmsford, arrived a couple of hours beforehand and saw worrying signs on the departure boards.

"All these flights were coming up with either delayed or cancelled and our one was delayed at that time by about two hours," she said.

"It hadn't even left Stansted at that time. So that's when the panic started."

She also was not offered water while at the terminal.

Jet2 and Ryanair have been approached for comment.

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