By Jan Strupczewski and Haley Reed
BRUSSELS (Reuters) - More than 200 flights in and out of Belgium were cancelled or diverted on Wednesday after a power surge disabled the operations of domestic air traffic controller Belgocontrol.
At Brussels Zaventem, the country's main airport, queues formed at the desk of national airline Brussels Airlines as passengers sought to re-book flights.
The suspension prevented flights arriving at or leaving all Belgium's airports, although planes could still cross at higher altitudes, where the upper air space is controlled by European traffic authority Eurocontrol.
Belgocontrol said it had restarted some systems at 2 p.m.(1200 GMT) and was at 20 percent capacity, allowing a limited number of flights. The agency said it did not know when it would be fully operational after the power surge put it out of action for more than four hours.
"The surge also took out our emergency generators, which is why we had to clear the airspace," a spokesman said.
"It's 6 a.m. at home right now so we haven't slept. Now we have to wait in this line," said Canadian student Shaneh Fielding, waiting at Brussels Zaventem for a connecting flight to Madrid.
French and German aviation authorities said there had been very little impact on flights in and out of their countries.
Belgocontrol is responsible for controlling the civil airspace from ground to 24,500 feet (about 7,500 metres) above Belgium and for the space between 14,500 and 24,500 feet above Luxembourg.
The airports of Antwerp, Liege and Ryanair hub Charleroi reported delays, cancellations and diversions.
Luxembourg Airport said the outage had no effect on its operations.
Hundreds of flights to and from London were disrupted in December by a technical failure at England's main air traffic control centre.
(Reporting by Robert-Jan Bartunek in Brussels, Jan Strupcewski and Clement Rossignol at Brussels Airport and Gregory Blachier in Paris and Vicky Bryan in Frankfurt; Editing by Philip Blenkinsop and Janet Lawrence)