In a statement, BA said: "Our flights due to depart the USA tonight are currently delayed due to a technical issue with our third-party flight planning supplier, which we are urgently investigating.

"We're sorry for any disruption this will cause to our customers' plans, our aim is for these flights to depart as quickly as possible."

Some customers said they were delayed for hours.

"All fun and games at JFK," one tweeted. "All British Airways flights grounded due to an error with their flight mapping system and now we have multiple alarms going off in departures."

Another said: "Captain of our British Airways flight just said that their flight computers have been down for two hours worldwide and no BA plane can file a flight plan? Seems not ideal."

BA has said the technical issues do not affect any current departed flights.

"This is not a safety issue. We are keeping our customers up to date and providing them with refreshments", the airline said.

Adding that the majority of short-haul flights are unaffected.

Costumers continue to share their frustrations on Twitter, describing it as "woeful".

One user said: " A little announcement might be nice no? So unfair on your ground crew to be left to face the flak. Hideous!!"

Another passenger complained about the uncertainty of the situation: "Midnight and we can't go to a hotel because BA won't officially cancel the flight. We don't know when the flight will leave and there's a plane full of people that they flew from Cayman *after* this meltdown started who will spend the night in the plane!"

The airline has apologised for the "disruption to our customers' journey", and has said they are "urgently investigating" the situation.

However, this is not the first time BA has had "technical issues" - back in March 2022 the airline experience another IT issue which caused delays at London's Heathrow airport.