Hundreds of fed-up passengers were grounded at Newcastle Airport yesterday as after a major computer failure stalled flights across Britain.

Excited passengers turned up to Newcastle International Airport to be told their planes were to stay on the tarmac.

Staff at the airport were told of the computer breakdown at around 6am, and chaos spread across the country.

Passengers were initially told they hoped everything would be back in working order and flights bound for their destination by 10am but staff were given the all-clear by 8am.

Many people were either sitting on the planes or turned away from the departure gates when the news broke.

Company director Christopher Harris, 55, of Darras Hall, Ponteland, was ready for take off when he was told of the computer failure. He was due on a British Airways flight to London.

From the plane, he said: "We were told there was a computer failure and we couldn't take off. If there are delays now then this will obviously have an impact of other flights and that'll have a knock-on effect ."

Chris Stalker, 37, a joiner from Durham City was facing a long delay with his wife and children.

He said: "We're going on holiday to Orlando and our flight was supposed to be at 12.50pm but it's been delayed almost two hours.

We'd an inkling this would happen because we saw the news before we came to the airport, but we weren't sure. We've got two kids aged eight and four and it's a question of keeping them occupied while we wait."

Carl Bevan, duty manager at Newcastle Airport, said: "We had a phone call at 6.30am saying West Drayton, not Swanwick, was experiencing a problem with the system. It's a plane identification issue and nothing to do with passenger safety.

"The air traffic controllers need the plane identification computers to be working so any southbound planes that were not using the North Sea route were indefinitely delayed, so flights to Aberdeen, Dublin and Belfast, for example, have not been affected.

"When we received the phone call we had to stop certain flights taking off, and at this stage all passengers were on board.

It's likely that the first round of scheduled flights from this morning are going to be cancelled and we'll have to re-book passengers on to the next available flight. About 10 planes will be affected, which is about 500 passengers.

"The cancellations are going to have a knock-on affect all day. Even if just the first scheduled flights are cancelled, because of extra pressure on air space there will be delays all day."

Meanwhile, Transport Secretary Alistair Darling has ordered that a report on the air traffic control computer crash be on his desk this afternoon.

The Edinburgh Central MP said National Air Traffic Services were holding an urgent investigation into the system failure.