A TV executive from Woodstock was left stranded on the tarmac for over an hour amid major 'technical issues' that have caused significant problems for British Airways.

The airline suffered a major outage, causing cancellations and delays of flights, pile-ups of luggage and leaving passengers stuck on planes after landing at Heathrow.

BA’s website and app were inaccessible for hours on Friday evening, preventing customers from checking in online or booking flights. The problems continue today.

Ed Hall, 54, a television executive from Woodstock, Oxfordshire, was stranded on a plane for over an hour after touching down at Heathrow Terminal 5 because the crew could not access any IT systems to get a stand where passengers could disembark.

He said there were issues even before his BA 399 flight took off from Brussels.

Mr Hall told the Press Association news agency: "We couldn't take off as the pilot's system that calculates weight, loads and distribution went offline and we had to go back to the gate from the runway to get a [manual] copy sent from London.

"BA is running on paper tonight".

Once he finally disembarked, baggage was piling up from passengers stuck on other flights, he said.

Mr Hall added that a friend waiting for a long-haul flight in Terminal 5 was having to board manually.

Photographs of departure boards in Terminal 5 showed few flights boarding, while people complained on social media about a lack of information.

Earlier this morning, British Airways announced it had cancelled all short-haul flights from Heathrow until midday and further disruption is expected throughout Saturday due to ongoing technical issues.

The airline said the problem, which may also cause delays for its customers using Gatwick and London City Airport, is related to a hardware issue and is not because of a cyber attack.

It is BA's second outage in 10 days.

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