Thousands of stranded holidaymakers are being forced to wait several days for flights home to the UK despite airline schedules returning to normal after an air traffic control failure.

Analysis of airline websites by the PA news agency showed most flights to the UK from popular destinations such as Majorca, Crete, Sicily and Antalya are sold out until the weekend.

Flights with spare seats are priced at more than £400 to deter new customers from booking them.

The disruption came at one of the worst times of the year as there is little spare capacity due to many families flying home at the end of the summer holidays.

EasyJet said it is trying to fly people back as quickly as possible.

It said in a statement: “Following the UK air traffic control systems issues on Monday, easyJet is now operating its normal schedule.

“We continue to work hard to support affected customers and bring them home including operating five repatriation flights as well as flying larger planes to particularly busy destinations.

“As more seats become available we are contacting customers who we know are yet to return home to try and get them on earlier flights.

“Seats on these flights will be offered on a first come, first served basis so we encourage those who wish to travel earlier to call us as soon as possible on +44 (0)330 5515147.

“Although this situation was outside of our control, we are sorry for the difficulty this has caused for our customers and remain focused on doing all possible to assist them.”

British Airways said it will continue to reduce the size of its business class cabins on popular short-haul routes to maximise capacity.

This involves selling the middle place in rows of three seats, which are usually kept empty in that part of BA aircraft.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe said initial inquiries show an “unusual piece of data” received by the company caused the issue.

Aviation analytics company Cirium said 1,585 flights due to serve UK airports were cancelled on Monday.

Despite the problem being resolved, the knock-on impact of aircraft and crew being out of position meant nearly 350 flights were cancelled on Tuesday and dozens on Wednesday.

Mr Rolfe said Nats is continuing to investigate what went wrong and will provide a “preliminary report” to Transport Secretary Mark Harper on Monday.

He added that the conclusions of the report will be made public.