Last updated 7.39am on Wednesday with passenger experience

Passengers on a Ryanair flight from Brussels to Malta spent Tuesday night at Charleroi airport in Brussels after their flight was repeatedly delayed.

The delay was a consequence of a computer glitch on Tuesday that caused disruption across Europe, with around half of all flights at risk of delays. The issue was a technical problem at Eurocontrol, the agency in charge of the continent's skies.

Several of the EU's biggest airports, including Amsterdam's Schiphol, warned of problems and advised passengers to check on their flights because of the computer breakdown.

"Today 29,500 flights were expected in the European network. Approximately half of those could have some delay as a result of the system outage," said a statement from Eurocontrol.

The chief operating officer at Malta Air Traffic Services, Robert Sant, told the Times of Malta that MIA was closely monitoring the situation. No other flights to Malta appeared to have been affected.

"We understand that the problem in the slot computer had been identified and resolved at around 4.20pm Malta-time but it will clearly take some time for the situation to get back to normal because of the knock-on effect. 

Malta International Airport advised passengers to check the flight information page on maltairport.com for the latest updates.

Maltese passenger's experience

A Maltese traveller complained that a Ryanair flight to Malta from Charleroi (Brussels) at 8.30pm (on Tuesday) was delayed all night.  

He said through Facebook that since there were around 400 people whose flights (to other destinations) had been cancelled earlier, the hotels around Charleroi were already full, and they were told that since their flight was now scheduled to 7am (Wednesday), the best thing was to sleep at the terminal.

"Reluctantly, we accepted thinking that at least they would supply the amenities requested. However, they supplied superficial beds (camp beds) and blankets not for everyone and when we asked the person in charge, he said that's the best he can do and there are no more."

Passengers, he claimed, were treated worse than pigs.

In a reaction, Ryanair told timesofmalta.com that owing to the Eurocontrol ATC failure, some flights experienced delays and it regretted having had to cancel some of them.

"We apologise for any inconvenience caused by this ATC failure, which was entirely beyond our control, and we worked hard to minimise the disruption to our operations," it said.   

The Brussels-based Eurocontrol, which coordinates European air traffic control operators, said the cause "has been identified and action is underway to return to normal operations" but that that would not happen until "late this evening" (on Tuesday).

The breakdown came a day after the Easter holidays when many travellers are on the move around Europe, and as commuters across France faced disruption from a massive rail strike in protest at President Emmanuel Macron's reforms.

"We have never had anything like this before," a Eurocontrol spokesman told AFP.

Brussels airport said departures were limited to 10 flights an hour. The Belgian airport manages 650 flights a day, according to its website.

Several airports across the continent warned of problems, with Schiphol saying that the "system failure" at Eurocontrol could have "possible consequences" for departures.

Helsinki, Prague and Copenhagen airports also said traffic was facing delays.

Eurocontrol said that there had been a "failure of the Enhanced Tactical Flow Management System", which tracks and manages traffic demand across the continent.

"Contingency procedures are being put in place which will have the effect of reducing the capacity of the European network by approximately 10 per cent," the agency said in an initial statement.

It added that flight plans filed before 1026 GMT were "lost" and asked airlines to refile them.

It added that air traffic control had not been directly affected and "there are no safety implications arising from this incident".