The wives of England's football heroes nearly missed their moment of glory when a computer glitch left them stranded at Stansted Airport.

Some of the squad's wives were booked on a VIP flight to Belgium to see Saturday's big match against Germany.

But they joined thousands of other passengers faced with severe delays and cancellations after a computer breakdown.

Luckily their plane finally took off in time for the crunch Euro 2000 tie. A Stansted spokesman said: "There was an FA VIP flight and I can confirm some of the players' wives were on that flight.

"It was delayed about two hours, but as far as we know they got to the match."

A military transport plane bringing deported English football thugs back from Belgium was also unable to land at the Essex airport.

The spokesman said: "They were advised to go through Manchester because we were experiencing such delays on Saturday."

Some deported fans flew into Stansted yesterday, following violent scenes sparked by England's victory over arch-rivals Germany in Charleroi.

The computer crash left thousands of travellers facing holiday misery at Stansted and other airports.

"We had some serious delays of up to two hours and there were some cancellations by airlines," said a spokesman.

"There were a few thousand people in the terminal around lunch-time on Saturday. The computers went down at about 9.30am and delays started to build up late in the morning. We started to see some planes getting away in the afternoon.

"All we know is it was a computer malfunction."

It is the second time in a month the main air traffic control system - based in West Drayton, near Heathrow - has crashed.

Stansted was still dealing with the knock-on effect yesterday (Monday) as airport bosses worked to clear the backlog.

Stranded - passengers waiting at Stansted.

Picture: Eastnews/Peter Lawson

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.