Disruption caused by the global IT outage has continued this weekend as airline passengers reported long delays and lost baggage, while pharmacies tried to deal with a backlog in medicine deliveries.
The outage spread globally on Friday morning after an update from global cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many Microsoft Windows PCs offline with a “blue screen of death” appearing on screens.
The company’s founder confirmed it was caused by a bug in the update and not a cyber attack, as some had feared.
Experts have warned it could take weeks for systems to fully recover and problems at airports were being reported on Saturday.
Andrew Evans, from Taunton in Somerset, said he had been waiting more than nine hours in Palma de Mallorca airport and claimed there had been little communication from airline operator TUI.
His flight, bound for Exeter, was due to take off at 2.05am local time (1.05am UK time) but passengers had still not boarded at around 10.30am local time on Saturday morning.
“Our holiday has absolutely fallen apart at the end – it feels like we are abandoned,” Mr Evans said.
“We went to the carousel but there was nothing there. We still haven’t got our luggage.”
Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Bristol to Portugal reported arriving at the holiday destination to find that no checked-in baggage had been loaded on to the plane.
On Friday, some 167 flights scheduled to depart from UK airports were cancelled, while 171 flights due to land in the UK were axed.
TUI said its IT systems “remained unstable” and apologised to passengers, adding: “We understand how disappointing this would have been and recognise that many customers were already at the airport waiting for their departure.”
The Port of Dover said early on Saturday that it was dealing with “hundreds of displaced” airport…
