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Thousands of British Airways passengers are waking up to discover their flights on one of the busiest days of the year have been cancelled.

Seven inbound arrivals to London Heathrow were grounded because the outbound flights to destinations such as Berlin, Copenhagen and Budapest did not operate.

In addition, at least 26 Friday flights to and from UK and European destinations have been cancelled by BA at Heathrow, including to Larnaca, Nice and Prague.

A Gatwick-Faro round trip on British Airways has also been grounded. In total around 6,000 passengers have had their BA flights cancelled – with many of them not told until 7am that they would not be travelling as planned.

Read more: Air passenger compensation – what are your rights when a flight goes wrong?

One passenger on a grounded Marseille flight was told, six hours before departure: “We’re extremely sorry that your flight has been cancelled at short notice due to adverse weather conditions in London.

“We’ll do all we can to get you on your way.”

They are entitled to be rebooked on other BA flights, or on any airline that has seats available, on the same day. But many carriers are expecting flights to be extremely full.

The first Friday in September is a key date for business travellers, as well as returning holidaymakers and people flying away to take advantage of more moderate prices, crowds and temperatures.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium believes today is set to the the busiest day for UK departures across 2024, with more than 3,000 flights scheduled from UK airports – equating to over half a million seats.

This would make it the busiest day for departures since October 2019, it said, and 4 per cent higher than the equivalent day in 2023.

And Britain’s biggest budget airline, easyJet, is predicting its busiest day of the year, with 300,000 passengers booked on nearly 2,000 flights.

In the UK alone, more than 170,000 passengers are booked on over 1000 flights to 101 destinations.

The busiest routes for sunseekers are to Alicante and Palma in Spain, Faro in Portugal, Nice in France, while Geneva and Milan are the top business and city-break routes.

Ali Gayward, easyJet’s UK country manager, said: “September has always been one of our busiest times for travel.”

Travel podcast: Why does British Airways cancel so many flights at Heathrow