Air traffic control outage snarls flights in Belgium

Airline passengers faced flight chaos in Belgium on Wednesday after a "technical failure" at Belgocontrol, the nation's air traffic control provider.

Some flights began to "gradually resume" by 2 p.m. local time (8 a.m. ET), but the morning failure had already disrupted the plans of tens of thousands of passengers. During the outage, all arriving and departing flights from were prevented from operating at Belgian airports. High-altitude flights were still able to fly near Belgium since that airspace is controlled by European traffic authority Eurocontrol, Reuters reports.

But the grounding of flights at Belgian airports created major headaches. More 200 flights had been canceled across the country and the disruptions were likely to cascade into the evening.

The hardest hit was the nation's main international airport in Brussels. The airport said all flights there had been grounded since about 9:35 a.m. local time (3:35 a.m. ET).

The airport acknowledged Belgocontrol's efforts to resume some flights, but warned that additional problems were expected.

"We advise our passengers to continue to check their flight information online and to contact their airline for more information," the airport warned via its website. "Brussels Airport will keep you up-to-date via the website, app and the Brussels Airport Facebook & Twitter account."

The Independent of London says "passengers trapped at Brussels airport described 'chaos' as huge queues built up at airline desks and planes were stuck for hours on the tarmac."