Air traffic controller woes have seen a trial put back until February, after one of the barristers got stranded abroad.

Scores of flights were cancelled after a fault hit National Air Traffic Services’ computer systems, meaning flight plans could not be processed automatically and instead had to be done manually.

The barrister representing a Banbury man due in court this week for trial on alleged inter-family child sex abuse was among those caught up in the fall-out from the systems failure.

On Tuesday (August 29), Judge Maria Lamb was told that the brief would not be able to return to the UK until Thursday at the earliest.

Adjourning the four day trial until next February, she told the defendant, who we are not naming in order to prevent prejudicing the trial: “I’m sorry that it’s not possible for your trial to take place today.

“As you’re aware, we obviously cannot proceed without you having your legal representative here and the variety of other problems that there are means that the only sensible course is for this trial to be postponed to February next year.”

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The defendant was granted bail with conditions not to speak to three prosecution witnesses. Barrister Greg Wedge appeared for the Crown Prosecution Service at the aborted hearing.

Yesterday, nearly 300 more flights were cancelled after the air traffic control glitch. Transport Secretary Mark Harper said an ‘independent review’ would be carried out by the Civil Aviation Authority.

Speaking to GB News, the government minister said: “This was a technical fault. We do not think this was a cybersecurity incident.

“And what will happen now with an incident of this magnitude is there will be an independent review.

“The Civil Aviation Authority will be putting together a report in the coming days, which obviously I will take a look at to see whether there are lessons to learn for the future, to see whether we can reduce the impact of this again.”

Flight analytics company Cirium said 790 departures and 785 arrivals were cancelled across all UK airports on Monday.

That was equivalent to around 27 per cent of planned flights and means around a quarter of a million people were affected.