Hundreds of EasyJet flights delayed or cancelled due to massive UK IT failure

All easyJet flights have been delayed or cancelled due to a huge technical failure.

Thousands of passengers have been left confused and surrounded by chaos after the systems crashed causing planes to be grounded.

The airline giant has apologised to travellers for the problem and confirmed that all flights due to leave the country between 1pm and 3pm today have been affected.

As few as two flights, to Mallorca and Thessaloniki, in Greece, from Gatwick airport were allowed to leave.

All other flights were delayed or cancelled as a result of the problem, although it seems some flights due to depart after 3pm are unaffected.

However, the knock-on impact of cancellations this morning and early afternoon has led to some delays this evening.

The budget airline had to ground dozens of planes today (Corbis via Getty Images)

Online, passengers have been venting their frustration.

One irked customer wrote on Twitter: “Oh EasyJet. It was all going so swimmingly.

“There we were, sat on board, buckled up, when every passenger got a txt alert that the flight had been cancelled.

“So now we're waiting for a train instead and £00s lighter of pocket & will be five hours later arriving.”

Another added: "EasyJet is actually the worst!

"They’ve cancelled flights and won’t even tell people what’s going on and to make it worse Manchester Airport won’t let people out get other flights."

While a third wrote: "You have cancelled my daughter's flight from Rhodes and no way of contacting anyone, no help to re-book, how can you desert customers in a foreign country like that"

A spokeswoman for EasyJet said: “Unfortunately, we are currently experiencing IT systems issues which means that flights due to depart between 13:00 and 15:00 UK time today may be impacted.

"Our team of IT specialists is working to restore the systems as soon as possible.

“We advise customers due to travel with us today to continue to check Flight Tracker to check the status of their flight before making their way to the airport.

“We apologise for the inconvenience caused and would like to thank customers for their patience as we work to resolve this as soon as possible.”