Hello and welcome to today's independent travel podcast. It's Tuesday the 29th of August and I really wasn't hoping or expecting to bring you this particular podcast. I had planned to talk about the joys of Helsinki's Central Library. But instead I have to bring you the latest scores about cancellations and disruption

due to the appalling failure for four hours yesterday of the air traffic control system

that normally keeps flights flowing very freely.

And, well, they weren't flowing freely

yesterday for four hours from 1115 to 315. Controlers were reduced to using manual handling.

That slows things down at Heathrow and Gatwick in particular. These are locations where

everything is running at full stretch,

particularly on a bank holiday Monday, and therefore, well, unfortunately, things unraveled pretty

quickly. I've counted over 1,200 cancellations yesterday. There's more than 200 today,

with EasyJet cancelling the most over 80 British Airways around 60,

Ryanair about 40 and that's going to affect probably another 30, 40, 50,000 people taking it to

around a quarter of a million people who have had their flights cancelled.

Many people waking up where they didn't expect to be today.

Some of them sadly on the floor of various airports in the UK and abroad.

Of course, I've been trying to find out for getting on for 24 hours what the cause was.

I've not been able to do that. I've put a series of questions to Nats, the air traffic provider, which they haven't answered yet. I will

let you know as soon as I do. But let's just run through what people's rights are, because

there's a lot of confusion about that. First thing is that it's very clear

under European air passenger rights rules that if your flight is cancelled and you're on a UK

or a European airline or you're flying from the UK to anywhere else, then you are entitled

to care as follows. The airline must, if the flight, cancels a

flight, get you on an alternative flight, or indeed if it's appropriate, a train or even a ferry,

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