THOUSANDS of holidaymakers from the region were stranded at Newcastle and Teesside airports at the weekend because of a computer breakdown.

Dozens of flights to Europe were delayed for up to ten hours and other flights to Heathrow were cancelled, because of the failure of the nation's biggest air traffic control computer, at West Drayton, near Heathrow.

Passengers had to be put up in hotels on Saturday night while airport staff struggled to sort out the chaos through the night and all day yesterday.

It was the second time the computer, which handles all flights entering UK airspace, had broken down within a week.

A spokesman for Newcastle Airport said yesterday that about eight outbound flights and a similar number of inbound ones had been seriously delayed since the breakdown at about 10am on Saturday.

He said: "There have been people getting frustrated, which is understandable, but most have been understanding.

"Luckily, most flights were not too badly delayed and the tour operators have been putting some people up for the night, so we haven't had hundreds of people having to sleep on the floor or anything like that."

A spokesman for Teesside Airport said that a number of flights to Heathrow were cancelled yesterday.

He said: "We are slowly sorting it out, but it has been a major problem.

"At least 15 outbound flights and about the same inbound were affected.

"That's up to about 3,000 people affected by this. Almost all the passengers were fine about it and understood that safety was paramount.

"We expect everything to be back to normal for the coming week."

Gatwick and Heathrow airports were the worst hit but airports such as Newcastle and Teesside suffered knock-on effects. A spokesman for the National Air Traffic Control Services said problems like this were extremely rare and an investigation was under way to establish how it had happened.

l Tory leader and Richmomnd MP William Hague and former England soccer star Sir Bobby Charlton were among those hit by flight delays.

Mr Hague had intended to fly to Portugal for a meeting with fellow leaders of European centre-right parties but was forced to remain in London after his flight was cancelled.

Sir Bobby had to watch Saturday night's Euro 2000 England-Germany match at home on television after he could not fly to Belgium.

He was due to leave Manchester Airport at 11.50am but the technical hitch meant he would not arrive in Belgium until 9.15pm.

Sir Bobby said: ''I can't believe it.

"There's a few of us who haven't been able to go.''