British Airways directors will be touring terminals this weekend

Staff shortages and technical problems led BA to cancel over 100 flights last week, angering passengers at Heathrow.

The latest cancellations are return trips from Heathrow to New York, Brussels and Zurich.

BA chief executive Rod Eddington and 11 other directors visited Heathrow at the weekend to boost morale at the crisis-hit airline.

The directors were on hand to help out and greet passengers, but did not fill in for regular staff.

Mr Eddington has previously admitted the company made mistakes.

"Clearly we did get it wrong because we didn't have enough people in the terminal on Monday," he said on Wednesday.

We let ourselves down ... our customers and our own people BA chief executive Rod Eddington What caused travel chaos?

"We know we're short-handed in the terminals. We've got 200-plus people in the training system to address that, but yes, we let ourselves down on Monday night, our customers and our own people."

Six flights were cancelled on Saturday were out of a total 540, and the spokesman said things were running "pretty normally".

The airline warned then that services might be "merged" in coming days to cope with the problems, but said any changes would be made well before departure times.

Thousands of passengers were left stranded after cancellations

The disruptions began on Monday when BA ditched 50 flights from Heathrow due to technical problems with some transatlantic aircraft and staff shortages.

The knock-on effect of having planes and crews in the wrong place resulted in a further 31 cancellations at the airport on Tuesday.

Another seven were cut on Wednesday, prompting BA's director of operations Mike Street to apologise to passengers.

The airline thought it had avoided any holiday weekend problems when it struck a pay deal with check-in staff and baggage handlers, averting a planned strike.