The airline blamed a third-party planning supplier for the disruption to planes leaving the USA.

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In a statement last night, 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.

“This is not a safety issue. We are keeping our customers up to date and providing them with refreshments.”

Some passengers said they were stranded for hours.

One tweeted: “All fun and games at JFK.

“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 wrote: “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.”