UK travellers have been having a torrid time at both home and abroad as a result of complete air traffic chaos.

A problem was spotted at 8.30am on Monday and normal flight operations continued for up to four hours before restrictions were put in place.

The system suffered a "failure in processing some of the flight data we receive", said Martin Rolfe, chief executive of the National Air Traffic Services (NATS).

The organisation resorted to manual data handling to "make sure that we can never present erroneous or mistaken safety-critical data to controllers", he said.

What happens if you miss your flight due to airport delays?

Asked if the disruption was caused by an incorrectly filed flight plan by a French airline, he said: "We are not in a position yet to go into that."

Pressed on the issue, Mr Rolfe said the systems were complex and he was "not going to rush into saying what the cause is" - but that he is "not ruling out anything at this stage".

Will you be paid if you miss work?

Angela Carter, legal director for England and Wales at WorkNest, told Sky News that, unfortunately, most people won't be entitled to be paid if they are stuck in a different location due to flight delays or cancellations. 

This is unless their employment contract contains a provision for them to be paid if they are unable to attend work due to circumstances outside their control.

"If the employer and employee agree, and assuming the employee has not exhausted their holiday entitlement for the year, this could be taken as a holiday in order to be paid," she said.

"If the employee didn't have any holiday to take or didn't want to use holiday to cover the absence, then it would be treated as unpaid leave."

However, you may be able to get around this if you can work remotely and have the correct equipment on you - although of course, you would need to check with your employer.