British Airways faced widespread disruption to its operations on Saturday after technical problems forced it to cancel all short-haul flights from Heathrow on Saturday morning. 

The airline said the problems, which may also cause delays at Gatwick and London City airports, is related to a hardware issue and not a cyber attack.

The major outage has caused cancellations and delays of flights, pile-ups of luggage and passengers stuck on planes after landing at Heathrow.

BA’s website and app was offline for hours on Friday night, stopping customers from checking in online or booking flights. It is BA’s second outage in 10 days.

On Saturday the airline told customers on its website: “We’re extremely sorry, a number of our flights are disrupted today due to significant technical issues. If we’ve contacted you to say your flight has been cancelled, please don’t go to the airport. Log in and review your options in manage my booking.”

Earlier BA said “continuing technical issues” had forced it to cancel all short-haul flights from Heathrow until midday on Saturday.

“Our long-haul services at Heathrow and all flights at Gatwick and London City airport are due to operate as planned, but customers may experience some delays. Our website is working and customers can check-in online and at the airport.”

BA said it is offering customers on cancelled services options including a full refund and all passengers booked to travel on short-haul services from Heathrow on Saturday can rebook to a later date for free.

The airline said: “We know we have let our customers down and we will do everything we can to make this up to them – but for now our focus is on getting as many customers and flights away as we can.”