A FITNESS instructor who travelled to Mallorca on a family holiday is among the thousands of passengers left stranded abroad.

Paul Edwards, 40, of Denbigh, had enjoyed a relaxing holiday abroad with his family and another family, made up of two adults and one child.

The families were set to return home to the UK at 11.30am on Tuesday, August 29 but after they had checked in, they were informed their flight had been cancelled. This was due to a wide-spread system failure which has left thousands of flights cancelled.

Paul said: "We haven't had any correspondence from Jet2 and we had to get a hotel on booking.com. We found out about 45 minutes before we were due to fly out. We had already check in and were awaiting our flight.

"I'm feeling relaxed. We are trying not to stress as it out of our control.

"The next flight has not been confirmed as yet. We stayed in Hotel Alua, a lovely hotel, and then we checked into a rubbish hotel by the airport. We have turned it into an extra two day holiday for the kids which is nice with not knowing when we are due back home."

Paul, who teaches fitness classes in Ruthin and Trefnant and hosted a virtual session for his group this morning, said up to yesterday the holiday had been "10 out of 10".

He added: "The new hotel costs £385 for both families. It is awful and apparently we can claim £150 each a night but it has not been confirmed.

"Everyone is in the same situation out here. We have been trying to contact Jet2. Our travel agent is in contact all the time and they have been great."

The widespread flight disruption was caused by an “unusual piece of data”, an air traffic control (ATC) boss has said.

Many UK holidaymakers are stranded overseas after about 2,000 flights were cancelled because of the issue.

In a statement, Jet2 said on Wednesday, August 30: "Due to the technical fault affecting the UK’s National Air Traffic Services, which has impacted all airlines, all Jet2.com flights departing and returning to the UK are expected to experience significant delays. Our teams are working incredibly hard to communicate with, and look after, our customers and they will continue to do so.

"As a result of the disruption, we have taken the decision to cancel some outbound flights scheduled Monday, August 28 and Tuesday, August 29.

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"We will be contacting all affected customers to let them know, and they will of course receive a full refund. We are extremely sorry to have to take this decision however the ATC disruption leaves us with no other choice.

"We are reviewing today's programme as the situation evolves, and we will update customers in due course.

"Customers due to travel tomorrow should travel to the airport as normal unless we advise otherwise, and continue to monitor flight information on our website.

"We would of course like to apologise to everyone that is affected by this situation, which is unfortunately completely outside of our control."

If you are a Jet2 customer, visit www.jet2.com/en/latest-travel-information for further updates from the company.