UK heatwave: Thousands of passengers disrupted as flights and trains cancelled in extreme temperatures

On the busiest day of the year for travellers, more than 100 flights have been cancelled to and from Britain’s airports, while on the railways passengers are still experiencing long delays and cancellations as a result of the extreme heat on Thursday.

British Airways has cancelled at least 50 flights to and from Heathrow airport – partly as a result of knock-on delays from Thursday, but also to thin out the schedules and add resilience. Multiple services to and from Berlin and Rome have been cancelled, along with domestic links to and from Manchester, Newcastle, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

One BA flight to San Francisco is running over 24 hours late.

A spokesperson for British Airways said: “Our teams have sincerely apologised to customers for the inconvenience and have been doing what they can to look after them, providing refreshment vouchers and hotel accommodation and as much information as they can on the delays or cancellations, which have been caused by thunderstorms following the extreme heat.”

Other airlines affected include Austrian Airlines to Vienna, Alitalia to Rome and KLM to Amsterdam.

At Gatwick, the two main airlines – easyJet and British Airways – are struggling to recover from many long delays and cancellations on Thursday.

Passengers on BA’s inbound flights from Verona, Naples, Salzburg, Malta and Dalaman were delayed overnight and are due to arrive early in the afternoon.

But thousands of easyJet passengers are in a much worse position after the airline cancelled dozens of flights – some of them as passengers were waiting to leave on Thursday night. Services on easyJet to Basel, Geneva and Hamburg were abandoned at around 9pm because the aircraft would not have reached the Continental airports before the flight curfews came into effect.

On Friday morning, easyJet has cancelled 20 flights to and from Gatwick, including links to Tenerife, Rome and Venice.

There are also widespread cancellations on easyJet from Luton, including to Geneva, Milan, Naples and Nice.

The airline has also cancelled links from Bristol to Faro, Inverness and Pisa.

Flybe has some cancellations on domestic links, including Edinburgh to Birmingham and Southampton to Manchester.

Airline passengers are entitled to meals and accommodation until they can be flown to their destination – on a different airline if necessary. They will not, though, receive cash compensation.

On the railways, London St Pancras is the worst-affected station, with wholesale cancellations on lines north and south.

The commuter operator Thameslink says: “Network Rail have been unable to completely fix the damage to the overhead wires between London St Pancras International and St Albans, and they will continue to work on this on Friday night.

“Thameslink will have a reduced ability to run trains, as half the running lines will be unavailable.” That will affect passengers heading for Gatwick and London airports.

East Midlands Trains has an emergency timetable in force from Sheffield, Derby, Nottingham and Leicester to London St Pancras.

At the adjacent station, London King’s Cross, there are some cancellations on the East Coast main line train crews and rolling stock being in the wrong place for the start of service.

West Midlands Trains has cancelled and curtailed some trains linking Birmingham with Rugeley, Crew and Liverpool, and will be running shorter trains on many routes.

The train operator said: “Network Rail has been working hard overnight to repair damage caused by yesterday's extreme weather. However some work is still on going and many trains are starting the day out of place.