Only a small number of claims on travel insurance policies are expected after this morning's delays in UK flight departures.
Primary Travel Insurance Services managing director John Bibby said passengers were unlikely to be able to make claims for delay to their travel as the disruption had been over too short a period.
He said the majority of policies only come into effect after a delay of 12 hours.
But some claims would be possible under the missed departure section of travel policies if passengers had missed their connecting flights, said Bibby.
The National Air Traffic System (Nats) said it is continuing its investigations into the cause of a computer problem that led to hundreds of air passengers being stranded.
Nats said it wished to apologise to passengers affected by the delays.
It said the Flight Data Protection System (FDP) was being tested overnight for a future upgrade. At 6am errors were detected in the distribution of flight data between air traffic control centres and, as a precaution, the FDR was restarted, causing an interruption to full service.
The data processing system was restored at 06.42 and declared fully operational at 07.03. Flight capacity restrictions were lifted at 08.05. Nats said the system was now fully operational and it was confident that it was stable.
“Through the response team at West Drayton, we have been working with airports and airlines to clear the delayed departures, and expect the backlog to be cleared quickly,” said Nats.
Nats is a public private partnership between the Airline Group, a consortium of seven UK airlines, which holds 42%; Nats staff, who hold 5%; UK airport operator BAA, with 4%; and the government, which holds 49% and a golden share.
The Airline Group is a consortium of seven UK airlines: British Airways, bmi British Midland, Virgin Atlantic, Britannia, Monarch, easyJet and Airtours.
