BROKEN WINDOWS

Airport passengers left in tears as queues sparked missed flights fears | Healthcare services south of the Border severely affected by IT drama | Sky News forced off air for most of the morning before fix was deployed

- RUTH SUTER & ROBYN BELL

PASSENGERS at Scotland's busiest airport were left in tears yesterday as a global IT outage caused travel chaos.

Thousands of flights worldwide were affected by a defect in a software update affecting Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The problem hit TV stations, banks, hospitals and businesss as computers shut down across the globe.

Queues of holidaymakers formed outside the terminal building at Edinburgh Airport early yesterday morning as the problem emerged.

It caused departures boards and boarding pass scanners to fail and 55 arrivals and departures were cancelled.

Priya Mattu, 16, was left in "floods of tears" at the prospect of missing a flight to visit her dad in the US.

Priya's mum Alison said: "It was chaos. People were confused and being sent outside all the way to the trams and car park after being told it was a security issue.

"Panic was setting in for those, including my 16-year-old daughter, who was travelling alone to visit her father. She was in floods of tears on the phone to me, distressed and worried sick."

Jennifer Lawson, from Inverkeithing in Fife, arrived at the airport at 5am with husband Andy and their children, aged five and 11, to fly to Birmingham. Jennifer told the Record: "We arrived at 5am and went through security. We were then told the screen for the gates had crashed so we had to listen to the tannoy instead.

"We then heard an announcement for our flight saying gate 23. When we arrived, they told us it was meant to be gate 28.

"By the time we got to the correct gate, we were told we couldn't board the plane.