A West Cork couple spent six and a half hours stranded on the runway, waiting for their plane to take off.

Tony and Kate Wilkinson were travelling home to Bandon through Stanstead Airport, after visiting family in London, when a technical error that affected more than 1,000 flights prevented them from taking off.

‘The pilot came on and said, we are just being held here for maybe five, ten minutes. There seems to be a little something happening,’ Tony explained while speaking on C103's Cork Today show, ‘the staff was sitting in their little jump seats, all belted up. So we really were at that point of, we're off.’

Twenty-five minutes later they were informed there was a disruption, but seeing as they were the next plane scheduled to take-off they would be staying on the plane.

‘And then the time just started to pass. An hour went by and two, and we were just chatting to each other,’ he said, ‘I pulled out my tablet and picked up, as you do nowadays, Flight 24. And we were watching the story fold out in front of us. You know, we could see that nothing was departing Heathrow and all the others.’

When the announcement eventually came that their flight was cancelled, the couple disembarked into ‘an absolutely chaotic departure lounge’.

Tony who lives with Parkinson’s, was forced to sit on a beam in the corner until a fellow passenger Oliver, who he had bonded with on the plane managed to find a wheelchair for him.

It was just one example of the kindness Tony and Kate witnessed, with others offering other passengers lifts or power banks and making sure everyone was comfortable until they eventually got on the plane home later that night.