Flights delayed by up to 2 hours at Gatwick and Stansted airport In total, 100,000 passengers are affected and 1,300 flights disrupted Flights were cancelled or delayed after problems with telephone system Heathrow: 228 flights cancelled due to computing glitch in Hampshire Stansted Airport: 175 flights delayed for up to two hours By Mark Duell, Nick Craven and Amanda Williams Thousands of airline passengers could face further delays today after a major air traffic control glitch caused disruption at airports across the UK and Ireland. Hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed yesterday after problems with a telephone system at the National Air Traffic Service (Nats) centre in Swanwick, Hampshire. Up to 100,000 passengers faced delays and cancellation at the major airports of Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick, after an air traffic control glitch led to the worst airport chaos since the 2010 ash cloud crisis. Taking a nap: A woman sleeps at London Gatwick as Britain's airports experienced delays and cancellations Not moving: Fed-up passengers are seen waiting and queuing at London Heathrow Airport on Saturday Passengers queuing for the Ryanair ticket desk at Stansted airport in Essex Officials said there were more than 250 flight cancellations, with a further 1,000 flights delayed by a broken internal telephone system in a single air traffic control base. Air traffic control chiefs announced at 7.30pm on Saturday that they had finally solved the glitch, 14 hours after the problems began. Earlier they had missed a self-imposed 6.30pm target for fixing the issue. European air traffic controllers at Eurocontrol said that in all 1,300 flights across Britain and Ireland were delayed by the chaos. While the disruption is likely to have a knock-on effect today, the three main London airports predicted a largely trouble-free day. A spokesman for London Heathrow said last night: 'There are no planned flight schedule changes for Sunday. We still advise passengers to check with airlines prior to travelling though. Gatwick said that operations had returned to normal and it was 'not anticipating significant disruptions' today, while Stansted forecast a normal flight schedule but advised passengers to check the status of flights with airlines. A screen displays delayed flights at Gatwick Airport Estimates: A flight information board at London Stansted after a 'technical problem' caused delays at airports Bored: A woman looks fed-up in Terminal Three at Heathrow (left) while another sleeps at Gatwick (right) The problem occurred when the 23 controllers on a night shift at Swanwick handed over to the 125 controllers on the day shift at about 6am. Nats' night-time operating system, which combines sectors of airspace for when it is less busy, did not properly switch over to the daytime system, causing a communication problem with the centre's internal telephones. They stressed that safety was not at risk at any time. Waiting around: Passengers queue outside Terminal Three at Heathrow Airport as thousands were delayed Heathrow was the worst affected, with 228 cancellations - 112 in arrivals, and 116 departures, with most being short-haul flights. A spokesman for the airport said the cancellations represented 15% of their usual daily total of 1,300 flights going in and out of the airport. She added: 'Today we have 18 cancellations - 11 arrivals and seven departures - and that's mostly due to crew displacement. Apart from that we are pretty much running as normal. Frustrated passengers were left in long queues to rebook flights, while others reported having to wait for hours to speak to airline representatives. Manchester Airport, Leeds Bradford, Doncaster Robin Hood, Newcastle, Birmingham, Belfast International Airport and Dublin Airport were also all affected. The glitch affected flights across Europe, with 1,300 flights, nearly 8 per cent of all traffic in Europe, 'severely delayed', according to Eurocontrol, the European organisation for air navigation safety. A spokesman for Nats said last night: 'As of 7.30pm we had handled 3,250 flights today - around 90 per cent of the traffic handled last Saturday (3,613 flights).' In a statement yesterday, Nats apologised for the disruption, saying: 'The reduction in capacity has had a disproportionate effect on southern England because it is extremely complex and busy airspace and we sincerely regret inconvenience to our airline customers and their passengers. To be clear, this is a very complex and sophisticated system with more than a million lines of software. This is not simply internal telephones, it is the system that controllers use to speak to other ATC agencies both in the UK and Europe and is the biggest system of its kind in Europe. This has been a major challenge for our engineering team and for the manufacturer, who has worked closely with us to ensure this complex problem was resolved as quickly as possible while maintaining a safe service. Looking down: There have been cancellations at London Heathrow Airport for flights scheduled to leave. The £623 million National Air Traffic Services (NATS) centre yesterday experienced a failure of "a very complex and sophisticated system." During the night, when there are fewer flights, a single air traffic controller can handle more than one sector of airspace, but as the day begins, with a corresponding upsurge in the number of planes in the air, the system is designed to split air space into several smaller sectors, each handled by a separate controller. Yesterday that split did not happen and the system remained in "sleep" mode. That left air traffic controllers unable to open up the skies to the usual daytime volume of flights, so initially, departing flights were grounded to allow incoming airliners on long-haul journeys to land. Operations at NATS at Swanwick, in Hampshire, have been affected by computer glitches before, but yesterday's problem was unconnected to any previous malfunctions. As NATS staff worked to overcome the difficulty, bosses were looking to see if recent changes or routine maintenance could have been to blame. Part-privatised in 2001, NATS had a series of software problems as it prepared to move operations to Hampshire from its old HQ at West Drayton in West London.