Travellers reported planes being stuck on the tarmac at the West Sussex airport after problems emerged around 8am this morning.

Dozens of departures and arrivals appeared to be affected, with football fans travelling to Premier League matches among those experiencing issues.

Gatwick Airport has apologised, saying the delays were the result of an "outage" to a National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system.

It comes just months after widespread disruption affected thousands of passengers at airports in August, with NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe then blaming a "one in 15 million" technical glitch.

In response to the latest system outage, Ryanair boss Michael O'Leary called for Mr Rolfe to quit or be removed by the UK government.

Danny Bellringer, 45, was travelling from Dublin with fellow Brighton fans for the game against Burnley when the group was told their Aer Lingus flight would be delayed by at least two hours.

The oil rig worker said: "There's not a huge amount we can do - we're kind of used to it when travelling over from Ireland to the UK for games, (it) very rarely goes completely smoothly."

Padraic Mac Aonghusa, 24, said fellow passengers on his Ryanair flight from Dublin were "angry" when the pilot announced there would be a delay due to the issues at Gatwick.

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A London Gatwick spokesperson said: "There was an outage to a local NATS system earlier this morning which has now been rectified.

"Some passengers may experience delays. We apologise for any inconvenience."

The spokesperson added that one flight was cancelled and two were diverted from Gatwick.

A spokesperson for NATS said: "For a short period earlier this morning we had a technical issue that was quickly fixed.

"To make sure safety was maintained departures were paused temporarily but were resumed around 8am.

"We are working with airlines to minimise any delays and would like to apologise for anyone whose journey has been affected."