Holidaymakers have been stranded inside Corfu Airport for more than 50 hours after an IT glitch disrupted flights back to the UK.
Airports, banks, supermarkets and other major businesses had their services disrupted services disrupted after an update from IT system CrowdStrike failed.
Many Microsoft users were unable to access software, leaving some airlines unable to take off flights.
Brits holidaying on the Greek island of Corfu said they were desperate to get back home after waiting in the airport for more than two days.
One TUI flyer told Manchester Evening News: ‘It has been 50 hours now and we still don’t know what’s happening.
‘Everyone is just miserable and angry. It’s been a nightmare. People have work tomorrow.
‘My mum works for the NHS and was like “what am I going to do?”. People will be losing a day in work and have commitments, will they pay our wages?’
TUI said: ‘Following the global IT issue impacting businesses around the world, we would like to apologise to everyone affected.
‘Whilst the original IT issue was outside of our control, the impact to our systems has meant that our flight programming continues to suffer delays and cancellations.
‘We are very sorry to all those customers impacted as we understand how disappointing this is. We ask that all TUI customers due to travel this weekend regularly check the Travel Information page of the TUI website for the latest updates. Your TUI Team.’
Hundreds of flights have been cancelled this Friday, with bad weather only exacerbating delays and cancellations.
Airlines reported being unable to process passengers and resorted to manually checking in customers at airports around the world with 167 flights departing from the UK and 171 incoming cancelled on Friday.
EasyJet cancelled 48 flights at London Gatwick on Sunday, with British Airways also cancelling dozens of journeys from Heathrow.
Aviation analytics company Cirium said 5,078 flights – or 4.6% of those scheduled – were cancelled globally.
The CEO of Crowdstrike said: ‘We know that adversaries and bad actors will try to exploit events like this. I encourage everyone to remain vigilant and ensure that you’re engaging with official CrowdStrike representatives.
‘Our blog and technical support will continue to be the official channels for the latest updates.
‘Nothing is more important to me than the trust and confidence that our customers and partners have put into CrowdStrike.
‘As we resolve this incident, you have my commitment to provide full transparency on how this occurred and steps we’re taking to prevent anything like this from happening again.’
Industry expert Adam Smith of the BCS (the Chartered Institute for IT) has warned that it could take ‘weeks’ for all computers and systems to be fully restored.
He said: ‘The fix will have to be applied to many computers around the world. So if computers are getting blue screens and endless loops, it could be more difficult and take days and weeks.
‘Microsoft Windows isn’t the main OS for mission-critical systems, that’s Linux – and so this could have been much worse.’
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