Pizzas galore!

One passenger, Tara Wilson, 35, had travelled from Los Angeles to visit family in Ireland. Sitting on the floor surrounded by her luggage and three children, Maeve, 5, Alannah, 4 and Nicola, 2, she said: “I flew with BA to London and was booked with Aer Lingus for the second leg. Both airlines told me to go to each other’s desks. We’ve been on an overnight flight and waiting here since 5am. We don’t even know what to do, whether to wait in the terminal. We’ve nowhere else to go. You’d think airline staff would be more prepared.”

The jitteriness of security officials became apparent when they removed a British pilot from a transatlantic flight out of Manchester just before take-off. Amar Ashraf, 28, believed it was because he had a “Muslim-sounding name”. He was returning to his home in the British Virgin Islands when he was told to leave the aircraft and then questioned by police.

He blamed US authorities. “I guess I just meet the profile,” he said. “They told me they weren’t taking any passengers on stand-by but I think it was racial profiling. I’m sure there were other passengers on stand-by . . . There are a lot of bad apples out there giving me a bad name.”

Mr Ashraf, who has lived in the US for ten years but grew up in Wrexham, captains domestic US flights. The airline he works for is a partner airline of Continental, allowing him access to stand-by flights. “It’s because of the US Transportation Security Administration. I wouldn’t say it’s the airline’s fault, it’s the TSA that I have an issue with. They must have just pulled my name from a list.”

Felix Eza, 38, a software analyst, was philosophical about the delays. If terrorists “achieve their objective to disrupt our lives, then it’s a problem because they have won”. As he waited with his two sons for a flight from Manchester to Orlando, he said: “If it takes us longer to get through the queue, then it does.”

At Gatwick, Britain’s second busiest airport, the number of cancelled flights out of the airport rose to 135. There were chaotic scenes at check-in as staff said as late as mid afternoon that passengers could catch flights while signs above the counters said otherwise.

“Well done MI5,” said Jim Thomas, 44, who was waiting to board a flight to North Carolina with his wife and three children. “These terrorists are crazy but you have got to get on with it.”

Scotland’s main airports suffered at least eighty flight cancellations as well as widespread delays. Eurostar said that it received 5,000 bookings as a result of “displaced airline passengers”. The London to Paris route sold out yesterday and there was limited availability for the next few days.

The United States said that passengers arriving from Britain would undergo rigorous inspections. US Customs and Border Protection said that it had taken steps to “identify other potential high-risk individuals”.

At airports across the US, passengers arrived to lengthy security queues and terminals crawling with police and sniffer dogs and a ban on all liquids and gases in hand luggage. At Dulles airport, Washington, Rebecca Duarte tried to explain to her sobbing five-year-old why they would not be able to fly home to her father for another eight hours. “There were some bad people who wanted to blow up the plane,” she said. “Now they have to look through everyone’s bag to make sure it’s safe.”

Across Europe, flights were cancelled, diverted and delayed after Heathrow’s request that all incoming and outgoing flights of less than three hours be suspended. Lufthansa ordered six flights to turn back to Germany after they had taken off, and cancelled all services from Germany to Heathrow until 4pm, pulling 22 flights affecting 3,041 passengers. Some airlines cancelled flights only to Heathrow, but others cancelled them to the London area, and others stopped all flights to Britain.

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