British athletes are left STRANDED in Budapest

British athletes have been left stranded in Budapest after the World Athletics Championships concluded.

A group of around 40 athletes and staff from UK Athletics (UKA) had to return to their hotel after the flight chaos on Monday that saw almost 1,000 flights in and out of the UK grounded or cancelled due to a failure with the country’s air traffic control system.

Speaking on Tuesday, the transport secretary Mark Harper revealed a fault on this scale had not happened for a decade, and claimed it would take ‘some days to get… everybody to where they should be’ after thousands of British holidaymakers also saw their travel plans disrupted.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Service revealed the technical fault had been ‘identified and remedied’, but warned there was still work to do to return to normal service as they look to deal with the flights that have been impacted.

The delay in returning home comes after British athletes produced their joint-best showing at the World Championships ahead of next summer’s Paris Olympics.

Team GB earned 10 medals in total, which placed them seventh on the medal table, with Katarina Johnson-Thompson and Josh Kerr picking up memorable golds.

Some athletes are now travelling from Budapest directly to Zurich for the Diamond League meeting on Thursday while UKA is working to get other athletes back home but do not yet know when they will return.