A BUILDER today recalled how he accidentally caused chaos at Southampton airport with his digger by slicing through an underground communications cable.

He was working with a colleague when they cut the live telecoms cable carrying vital flight-related information.

Thousands of passengers were left stranded as planes were delayed, cancelled and diverted following the split-second blunder, which could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds, yesterday.

Some passengers even had to be bussed back to the airport after being diverted 35 miles away to Bournemouth.

The builder, who declined to be named, was only made aware of the mistake when the airport informed his construction company an hour later: "You've shut us down."

He told the Daily Echo: "It had not dawned on me that I had shut down an entire airport. I'm glad it is not me going on holiday."

The builders, employed by London-based Andrew Towns-Wadey, had been clearing the land of sewage as they prepared the former car park for a new office development by the airport.

The workman said: "We were digging and had no idea that there were any live cables in the ground.

"We had been told all the gas, water, electricity and BT cables had been turned off."

An investigation is now under way, amid talk of compensation from at least one main airline, to find out who is at fault.

Mike Rutter, a spokesman for Flybe, the airport's biggest carrier, said more than 5,500 of its customers had been affected.

He said: "We have had to cancel three flights - to Bergerac, Cherbourg and Belfast, and we had to divert four flights into Bournemouth from Malaga, Perpignan, Manchester and Rennes."

He added that the airport was last night staying open late to cope with delays but everything was expected to be back to normal this morning - dependent on BT repairing the National Air Traffic's cable and the equipment for check-in.

"Our team has coped superbly. We have had to deal with some frustrated passengers.

"It is beyond our comprehension that a developed country cannot make arrangements to protect the site of critical infrastructure such as fibre optic cables and we are considering our legal options to recover the extensive losses we have suffered.

"We are still calculating but it could run into hundreds of thousands of pounds."

A British Airways spokeswoman said: "We had two BA Connect flights diverted in Bournemouth as a result of the problems at Southampton Airport.

"There were two outbound flights were cancelled, one to Glasgow and one to Edinburgh. We are now experiencing delays to the rest of our services."

A spokeswoman for Bournemouth Airport said: "Because we were fully operation all day it didn't matter, we just had to park some extra aircraft on the 'apron'.

"We are geared up to handle it and we didn't have to bring in any extra staff."

A spokesperson for Southampton airport said: "The problem was caused by off-airport building work and BT are carrying out repairs.

"They hope to have the repairs completed within a couple of hours. We are working hard to resolve the situation as soon as possible."

Around 20 BT engineers were yesterday afternoon trying to sort out the problem on site.

British Telecom spokesman Jason Mann confirmed that damage had been caused to an underground cable by a contractor working outside the airport.

He said: "It appears that eight cables were damaged but further work is going to have to be done to clarify the full extent of the damage.

"We undertook emergency repair work so we could get major circuits back for the airport so that they could commence normal operations by running an overground temporary cable over the damaged area."

The news that hundreds of people would be staying overnight gave an unexpected financial boom for local hotels.

Bob Musker, who heads up the port city's hoteliers' association and owns The Dolphin Hotel in Southampton's High Street, said members would rally around to provide accommodation.

He said: "We are only too happy to help. The hoteliers have always worked well with businesses like the airport."

A spokeswoman for air traffic services provider NATS, based at Swanwick, confirmed flights at the airport had been affected.

Building firm Andrew Towns-Wadey was not available for comment.