UPDATE: Airport travel chaos for Sunderland holiday makers as technical issue resolved but disruption remains

Wearsiders hoping to jet off for some summer sun during the last week of the school holidays are facing major delays after a national issue with National Air Traffic Services (NATS) - the organisation in charge of air traffic control

Earlier today technical issues with air traffic control resulted in thousands of both incoming and outgoing flights across the UK being delayed with some flights cancelled.

Newcastle International Airport is the main departure venue for Sunderland residents taking both international and domestic flights, with the airport's current online live flight time table showing a number of flights as “cancelled”, "delayed" or "indefinite delay".

NATS have now issued a statement on their website confirming the technical issue has been resolved but there is still significant residual disruption.

The statement said: "We have identified and remedied the technical issue affecting our flight planning system this morning. 

"We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible.  Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.

"The flight planning issue affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions. 

"Our priority is always to ensure that every flight in the UK remains safe and we are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing. Please contact your airline for information on how this may affect your flight.

Newcastle International Airport has also now released an updated statement on social media but is still warning people of disruption.

The statement said: "We understand that the technical issue with National Air Traffic Services is now resolved, but it will take some time for operations to get back to normal. "There will continue to be significant disruption and we advise passengers to contact their airline to check the status of their flight."

Earlier today NATS stressed that “UK airspace is not closed”.