More than one hundred flights were cancelled yesterday as investigations into the crash-landing of flight BA038 continued. A section of the southern runway where the aircraft crashed remains closed and some long-haul flights were diverted to the northern runway, causing knock-on delays to short-haul services. Normal services are not expected to resume for several days.

By 5.30pm last night 113 flights had been cancelled from a normal daily schedule of 1,300, BAA, the airport operator, said.

BA said that it had cancelled 20 of its flights from Heathrow yesterday, mainly from short-haul and European destinations, and it was getting 90 per cent of short-haul flights off the ground. Eight flights between Edinburgh and Heathrow were cancelled and BA brought in two coaches to bus 90 passengers up from London.

As BAA struggled to rearrange schedules, long-haul flights appeared to have been given priority. A spokeswoman said that short-haul services were the most affected. The operator said Terminal 4 was “busy, but managed”. There was also some disruption at Terminal 1, from where most of the cancelled short-haul flights had been due to depart.

The spokeswoman said it was “extremely important” that passengers contact their airline to find out about the status of their flight. She said: “BAA is doing everything possible to minimise disruption to our passengers and additional staff are on hand at the terminals to assist passengers.”

Hege Vanoegee, 34, who flew from her home in Norway with her husband and 3½year-old twins yesterday for a connecting flight to Johannesburg, said: “I can only hope and try to be confident we will get off on time today because they said yesterday that we will be able to leave — and we didn’t.”

The family, who said they had an eight-hour wait before being told of their flight’s cancellation at about 11pm, spent the night in a hotel.

Mrs Vanoegee said: “I understand that there was a lot of chaos yesterday but I just hope it is all a lot better today. If it is the same today I will be disappointed in British Airways.”

More information can be found on BA's website www.ba.com.

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