BOURNEMOUTH University student Chloe Thomas was one of thousands of holidaymakers left stranded when British Airways suffered a worldwide systems failure.

BA grounded all planes from Gatwick and Heathrow on Saturday, causing chaos for thousands at the start of the school half-term and bank holiday weekend.

The disruption continued into Sunday, with dozens of Heathrow services cancelled and passengers warned not to go to the airport without rebooking or checking their flight status.

Some shops at the airport had run out of food and many people slept on the floor on yoga mats and blankets.

Miss Thomas, who studies at BU and is also a Welsh international table tennis player, arrived at Heathrow Airport on Sunday around four hours before her 7.30am flight to Germany for the World Table Tennis Championship in Dusseldorf.

She said there were “just queues everywhere” and her plane was cancelled at the last minute.

“We stood in the check-in queue, not moving, for about an hour then it came up on the screen that the flight was cancelled,” she added.

“To be honest I wasn’t surprised. We didn’t think we would make the flight because we were in the queue for such a long time.”

After finding out they would not be departing for Dusseldorf as planned, the group joined “another queue the length of the airport” to get a number to rebook.

“It’s chaos, people are running about all over the place trying to rebook,” Thomas said.

“There’s no-one to help, no leadership, it’s just mental. There are lots of people everywhere.There’s nowhere to sit, so people are just lying on the floor, sleeping on yoga mats.”

Yesterday Miss Thomas tweeted that her and teammates, Callum Evans and Daniel O’Connell, were travelling to Birmingham Airport where they had been booked on another flight.

The problem was caused by a worldwide systems failure, which BA said is believed to have been caused by a power supply issue.