By Katherine Lawton and Matthew Lodge
15:15 Jul 21, 2024, updated 21:05 Jul 21, 2024
Dozens more flights were cancelled as the global computer outage entered its third day on Sunday.
After hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled due to the global computer outage on Friday, further delays continued throughout the weekend, with bad weather in parts of Europe only adding to the problems.
EasyJet cancels 48 flights in London Gatwick on Sundays, particularly to popular holiday destinations such as Naples, Mallorca, Amsterdam and Marseille.
Images posted on social media show the travel chaos at Gatwick, with hundreds of people stuck at the airport waiting for information on their flights, and some being booked into hotels as delays dragged on overnight.
Passengers in London Heathrow Airport have also been hit hard, with British Airways cancellation of a dozen flights to and from the UK and continental Europe.
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It comes as the British Medical Association (BMA) today warned that GPs needed time to recover from the global IT outage after a bug caused a “significant delay”.
The technical flaw – created by an update sent to customers of cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike – caused Windows software to crash, causing travel hell at airports and train stations, as well as affecting GP and hospital appointments.
The outage hit transport systems hard, with hundreds of flights cancelled and delayed until the weekend, while rail services in Britain were also affected on Friday.
The effects continued to be felt on Sunday, with easyJet forced to cancel dozens of services at Gatwick Airport.
This included flights to Amsterdam in the Netherlands, Naples in Italy, Mallorca in Spain and Marseille in France.
There were angry scenes at the airport south of Londonwith photos and videos showing masses of passengers sitting in the terminal as if after their flights had been cancelled or delayed.
The cancellations have left some travellers unable to leave until tomorrow, with airlines forced to book them into hotels for the night before rebooking them on a rearranged flight the following day.
The airline has also been forced to cancel flights at other UK airports, including Luton and Manchester.
MailOnline has contacted easyJet for comment.
Other airlines have also faced problems, with British Airways cancelling a dozen flights between the UK and mainland Europe.
Wizz Air has also cancelled a number of flights at Luton Airport, while Aer Lingus today axed flights between Dublin and Heathrow.
Consumer protection laws stipulate that airlines whose flights are cancelled must rebook affected passengers on a new service, as well as provide them with a hotel and meals if the wait for the new flight is long enough.
Meanwhile, the health service is still feeling the consequences of the computer failure.
The doctors’ union said GPs “would need time to catch up on work lost over the weekend”, adding: National Health Service England should “make it clear to patients” that this is the case.
The BMA said its GP committee would continue to discuss with NHS England and medical records system provider EMIS to secure a “better IT backup system” to ensure the “catastrophe” does not happen again.
Dr David Wrigley, vice-chair of GPC England, the GP representative body to the BMA, said: “Friday was one of the most challenging days in recent times for GPs in England. Without a clinical IT system, many were forced to revert to pen and paper to serve their patients.
“While GPs and their teams have been working hard to care for as many people as possible, without access to the information they need, much of the work has had to be postponed until next week.”
He added: “GPs have made every effort this weekend to cope with the effects of Friday’s catastrophic loss of service and, as their IT systems are back online, we thank them and their staff for their hard work in exceptionally difficult circumstances.
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“We also thank patients for their patience with general medicine in this unprecedented situation.
“The temporary loss of the EMIS medical records system caused a significant delay.
“Even if we could guarantee that the problem would be completely resolved by Monday, GPs would still need time to catch up on work lost over the weekend, and the NHSE (National Health Service England) would need to make it clear to patients that normal service cannot resume immediately.”
A faulty update deployed by cybersecurity firm CrowdStrike knocked many services offline around the world on Friday, causing flight and train cancellations and crippling some health systems.
A fix has been rolled out for a bug in the update that affected devices running the Microsoft Windows operating system, as CrowdStrike CEO George Kurtz said it would take “some time” for systems to be fully restored.
GP practices across England reported being unable to book appointments or access patient records on Friday due to an outage in their EMIS system.
It comes as a cancer patient said surgery to remove a mass from her brain was cancelled this week due to global computer outage.
Chantelle Mooney, 41, was due to have a craniotomy on Friday but said the operation was cancelled following the computer glitch.
Ms Mooney was diagnosed with stage 4B terminal cervical cancer in February 2022, which had spread to her lungs.
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Three weeks ago she was told that a four-centimetre mass had also been discovered in her brain, after she began to feel weakness on one side.
After initially being postponed on Thursday, Ms Mooney arrived at the Royal Preston Hospital in Lancashire on Friday morning expecting to have surgery at 10am.
But as she watched television in the waiting room before being called into surgery, she discovered the news that Microsoft technology was facing outages around the world.
Mooney later said her surgeon arrived to explain that they were relying on Microsoft technology for scans, emergency medications, access to medical records and more.
After spending the morning waiting to see if the problem would be resolved, Ms Mooney was informed at 1.30pm that the operation would not go ahead and would be postponed until next Friday.