Several stars have been caught up in the travel chaos after arriving at London’s Heathrow as hundreds more flights in and out of Britain are axed.Rebel Wilson, Elizabeth Hurley, Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Attwood are among thousands facing delays in airports across the nation.Up to 250,000 travellers have been affected across airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted due to an air traffic control (ATC) system failure.The Australian actress, 46, looked exhausted as she shared videos while walking through the terminal of people stuck in the airport, after visiting the city for work.But rather than attempting to leave the country, Rebel suggested she had abandoned her original plans as she told fans she was ‘escaping’ the airport.Rebel panned around the luggage collection area to reveal crowds of people in a similar situation, and sarcastically wrote ‘Heathrow awesomeness’. The star, who did not reveal her alternative travel plans, is among tens of thousands of people who are dealing with the knock-on impacts following the system failure. Rebel Wilson revealed she was one of thousands of passengers stranded at Heathrow Aiport after an air traffic control system failure grounded 1,300 flights The Australian actress, 46, shared videos of people stuck at the London airport, while hopeful Benedict was seen arriving at the airport pushing his luggage on a trolley Elizabeth and her son Damian were also spotted in the same airport Fresh from an appearance at the National Television Awards on Tuesday, Olivia was also seen making her way into the airportMeanwhile, hopeful Benedict, 50, was seen arriving at the airport pushing his luggage on a trolley, as he seemingly attempted to catch his flight.Elizabeth and her son Damian were also spotted in the same airport. Fresh from an appearance at the National Television Awards on Tuesday, Olivia, 35, was also seen making her way into arrivals with her cases. Olivia was sporting a pair of huge black sunglasses and a baggy grey tracksuit as she pushed a luggage trolley.Some 1,750 flights to and from UK hubs were axed yesterday after a major issue at the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which provides control to 15 British airports. Facing calls from airline bosses to resign, NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe has been summoned to speak to Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander before she addresses MPs in the Commons this afternoon for the Civil Aviation Bill’s second reading. After some passengers slept on floors overnight, Heathrow had 246 cancellations by 6am today while 33 services were axed at Gatwick, according to FlightRadar24. Passengers travelling through all UK airports were warned to check their flights before setting off, with the disruption possibly lasting until the end of the month.Sky Sports Formula 1 broadcaster Martin Brundle said last night he had been stuck on a plane at Heathrow for ‘nine hours’ and had travelled nowhere – with the toilets on the aircraft having become blocked and no food being offered to passengers.He tweeted: ‘Great work BA and Heathrow. Nine hours and counting sitting on a plane which has travelled nowhere. At a remote parking bay, no food throughout.’Mother and baby and a person with a medical condition desperate to get off. As is everyone else. Toilets no longer available as blocked.’At Heathrow’s Terminal 4, passengers slept on yoga mats on the floor overnight as they awaited updates on their flight. Patrick Weston, 45, of Enfield, north London, was planning to fly out to Gothenburg in Sweden today but his service was cancelled. However, Rebel suggested she had abandoned the idea of flying out of Heathrow as her caption read that she was ‘escaping’ the airport. Benedict was sporting a wax jacket and pushed a trolley full of luggage Olivia sported sunglasses following a boozy night at the NTAs Passengers ask for information as London Heathrow Airport today as disruption continuesHe told the Daily Mail: ‘It’s absolute chaos here. You cannot believe this can keep happening in Britain in 2026 with all the technology we have. It was a mini break for me. I have no idea what is happening. There’s just a feeling of helplessness.’It shouldn’t be like this in this day and age. That’s the frustrating part. Of course, things go wrong. But this is just a regular occurrence now. I am stranded now.’Clara Nguyen, 28, and her boyfriend, Lihan Chen, 25, both students in Leeds, were booked on a flight from Heathrow to Ho Chi Minh City yesterday evening which is now expected to depart this afternoon.They spent the night in an Airbnb which they paid for themselves. Ms Nguyen said: ‘The airport tried to help but the service and information from Air Vietnam were poor.’Engineer Felix Abrams, 29, was on his way to Beijing to visit his girlfriend’s family. He said the way he had been treated was ‘demeaning’ and that there had been ‘a complete shirking of responsibility’.He added: ‘How was the airport not prepared for this? This failure has happened before. It’s not our fault. We’re not being told anything.’Another passenger, who did not wish to be identified, told the Daily Mail that she arrived at Malaga Airport yesterday for a flight home to Manchester and boarded on time.But she continued: ‘As soon as the doors were closed we were told there was an issue with air traffic control in London and we would be delayed for about one hour and 20 minutes. Travellers sleep on the floor at London Gatwick Airport in the early hours of this morning ‘After about half an hour the pilot apologised and said he had an update that wasn’t good news – we would be delayed another five hours minimum, so we had to return to the terminal.‘After waiting for steps and buses, we got off and were taken back inside the terminal, then told nothing and left to our own devices. Those with checked baggage had to retrieve that too. No easyJet staff to direct or assist, no information, desks closed – some people without phones were totally lost.’She added that trying to rebook flights on the app was ‘impossible’ because it was not working, with other airlines showing no flights until at least Monday.The woman also said: ‘My husband has a hospital procedure on Saturday, we don’t have enough medications with us to last beyond Thursday and I’m supposed to be back in work tomorrow. Nightmare.’It comes as Mr Rolfe was clinging to his job today ahead of a showdown with Ms Alexander amid calls for his resignation.Speaking to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Mr Rolfe apologised for the issue but dodged questions over whether he would quit.He said: ‘Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems. We never want them to. We always hope they won’t, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.’Mr Rolfe added: ‘I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world for its air traffic control service, both from a safety perspective and from a resilience perspective.’NATS was actually a partial privatisation 25 years ago, and since that point, it’s had access to funding.’We’ve invested way more than a billion in technology over that time, our service has consistently improved. Our safety is consistently improved from a very good base.’But all of those things don’t detract from the fact that when these things happen, it is disappointing and upsetting, for which I apologise.’On the cause of the problem, Mr Rolfe said a ‘thorough’ investigation would take place, but ruled out a cyber attack. What are your rights when a flight is delayed?– What flights are covered by UK consumer law?Flights operated by an airline departing from a UK airport, flights operated by a UK or EU airline arriving at a UK airport, or flights operated by a UK airline arriving at an EU airport.– How long must a flight be delayed before I am entitled to assistance?It depends on the distance of the flight.For flights under 1,500km (932 miles) such as from Glasgow to Amsterdam: at least two hours.For flights between 1,500km (932 miles) and 3,500km (2,175 miles) such as from Manchester to Marrakesh: at least three hours.For flights over 3,500km (2,175 miles) such as from Heathrow to New York: at least four hours.– What should this assistance include?A reasonable amount of food and drink (often via vouchers), a means for you to communicate (often by refunding the cost of phone calls) and accommodation and transfers if an overnight stay is required.– What happens in reality?Airlines often fail to provide this assistance during major disruption because of being overwhelmed by requests and a shortage of available rooms in local hotels.In this scenario, the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) says passengers can organise their own assistance and claim the costs back from the airline by submitting receipts.– Does that mean I should book a luxury hotel suite and order champagne?Airlines are unlikely to reimburse you for that. The CAA advises passengers not to ‘spend more than is reasonable’.– How long must assistance be provided?Until your flight takes off or you accept a refund after deciding not to travel.– What about getting to my destination?If a flight is cancelled, airlines are required to get you to your destination if you still want to travel.Most will book you onto another of their flights, but you may be entitled to travel with another airline or by an alternative mode of transport if it will get you to your destination significantly sooner.Passengers doing this are often required to purchase their own tickets and submit a claim to their original airline for reimbursement.– What if I no longer want to travel?You are entitled to a refund if you have been delayed by more than five hours.– Am I entitled to compensation for a delayed flight?Airlines may be liable for compensation if the reason for a delay is deemed within their control, such as a fault with the aircraft or pilot sickness.Causes of disruption classed as outside their control include severe weather, air traffic control restrictions and security alerts.In the case of this week’s disruptions, passengers are unlikely to be owed compensation as the technical issue is considered an ‘extraordinary circumstance’ and out of the airline’s control.– What if my flight is cancelled?You are entitled to a refund or a replacement flight, and the same assistance as if your flight was delayed.– Can I claim compensation if my flight is cancelled?You can if the reason is deemed within the airline’s control, you received no more than 14 days’ notice and depending on the timings of a new flight offered.Again, yesterday’s events are unlikely to fall within this category. <!- – ad: https://mads.dailymail.co.uk/v8/us/tvshowbiz/none/article/other/mpu_factbox.html?id=mpu_factbox_1 – ->
He added: ‘My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today.’And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.’What I will say is, I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an incident happen more than once, so this will be something different that we’ve never seen in 50 years of operation.’Discussing the response to yesterday’s incident, Mr Rolfe said: ‘We had everybody on site, everybody was in the right place. We had all the engineers in place. We had our various partners from software industries and so on all on hand.’So this was resolved as quickly as it could be, but within the limits of making sure that it all stayed safe.’Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.British Airways said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights yesterday which had affected ‘tens of thousands of customers’.Mr Rolfe has been under fire from Wizz Air and Ryanair after the latest issue which saw some passengers trapped on planes on runways for hours.Ryanair called on the Government to ask Mr Rolfe to resign.Asked in an interview with Times Radio Breakfast whether it was time for the Government to ‘step in’, the airline’s chief operations officer Neal McMahon said: ‘Absolutely.’We understand the Transport Secretary, Heidi Alexander, is going to meet with Martin Rolfe today and we think she should ask him to resign.’We think it’s critical that we put in somebody in NATS at the top who can deliver resilience, who can deliver the extra staffing that’s needed so that NATS can perform as well as other ATC (air traffic control) providers across Europe.’Like, we don’t see this in France, we don’t see this in Italy, we don’t see this in Spain, we don’t see this in Ireland, we don’t see this in Germany.’This is a UK problem where the backup systems don’t kick in when the primary systems have a fault.’He added that Ryanair has been forced to cancel 250 flights with costs to the company expected to ‘run into the millions’.Mr McMahon said: ‘Airlines across the UK cancelled over a thousand flights, and hundreds of thousands of people were disrupted because the lessons learned for the previous failures have not been delivered by Martin Rolfe.’Asked what he thought the cost to Ryanair would be following the incident, Mr McMahon said: ‘It’ll run into the millions.’He added: ‘We have crews everywhere and it’s a real shambles because we couldn’t get our aircraft where they were meant to be yesterday.’We had 250 flights cancelled, so really, really disruptive for us.’Mr McMahon also said yesterday’s NATS incident was caused by the ‘exactly the same issue’ as a problem in 2023.In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when NATS suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.Mr McMahon said of yesterday’s problem: ‘NATS told us it was a flight planning processing failure, which is exactly the same issue that happened in 2023.’If you remember in 2023 there was an issue with a flight plan, and it sent the system in a in a loop that eventually caused it to shut down.’We’re told that that was a rogue flight plan and we’re told yesterday this was a spurious flight plan which caused the same outage and our question is like: these things can happen, but where’s the backup systems?’He added: ‘The failing is that the backup system was unable to kick in and work, like it’s not a backup system if it shuts down.’That’s the definition of a backup is that when the primary system goes down, that you can revert and keep going.’