The boss of Zoom Airlines last night apologised to passengers who faced delays on flights to and from Bermuda and said the cause was a faulty warning light and not mechanical problems.

Jonathan Hinkles, Zoom's managing director, contacted yesterday explaining exactly what caused the delays over the weekend and on Monday.

But he made no mention of a further delay which saw passengers expecting to leave Bermuda last night stranded on the Island and put up in the Grotto Bay Beach Hotel.

Problems began when a Saturday night flight from London, Gatwick, did not arrive on the Island until 11 p.m., two hours behind schedule.

It then left close to midnight but was diverted to New York and landed at 4 a.m. Passengers did not leave New York until 10 p.m. Sunday night arriving in London at 11 a.m. UK time.

This caused a knock-on effect, meaning the flight that was due to leave from Gatwick Sunday morning was delayed by 30 hours, arriving just after 7 p.m. Monday night.

But Mr. Hinkles explained the aircraft did not have mechanical difficulties, as first believed. He said there was a faulty warning light.

"All of it boiled down to a warning light on the flight desk which had come on when it shouldn't have. What happens is that between two pilots there is a screen which monitors the aircraft systems with warning messages. It flags up on the screen. There was a warning light on the aircraft's right hand wing flaps," he said.

Mr. Hinkles explained the warning light came on shortly after takeoff from Bermuda on Saturday night indicating the flaps were one degree out of alignment meaning they were faulty. However, the flaps were in the right place even though the warning light came on.

He said that, from a safety point of view, the pilots had to take action to resolve the situation and go forward from there.

Mr. Hinkles said: "After take off, Bermuda was about to close for the night and the decision was taken to go to New York, which was the nearest alternate. Also, if we were going to have a lengthy delay, hotels in Bermuda are usually booked. Continuing to JFK was the right thing to do in those circumstances."

When asked why the flight took so long to depart JFK as it landed at 4 a.m. and left at 10 p.m., Mr. Hinkles said the air crew had to take a rest before flying back to London because they had exceeded their working time.

Mr. Hinkles added the reason not all passengers received accommodation immediately was because a significant amount of hotels in the JFK area were full. There were 250 passengers on the flight and finding hotel rooms for them was not easy, he said.

When the flight finally did leave New York, it was a replacement aircraft brought in from Canada.

Mr. Hunkles apologised on behalf of the airline saying: "We will be writing to every passenger over the next day or two to offer an apology for the delay and to offer a form of compensation."

He continued: "When we first started flying to Bermuda, we had troubles. We have now fixed those initial problems. We have maintained a very good level of reliability and punctuality. Incidents like this can occasionally happen to any airline and we can only offer our sincerest apologies to any customers that were affected."

But passengers who expected to leave the Island on last night's Zoom found out they too would have to wait.

The flight was expected to take off in the early evening but Pamela Scott, of the UK, arrived and was told that she would have to stay at Grotto Bay Hotel for the evening and would not be departing till noon today.

Mrs. Scott, who is an IT Manager, said she was surprised to hear that airport staff knew about the delay since lunchtime but that Zoom had not made any announcement about it on their website. Mrs. Scott was particularly annoyed that she would be missing her connecting flight today and will have to find alternative transportation.

"The Grotto Bay Hotel is full of Zoom passengers tonight," she said. "They have given us a dinner and breakfast voucher.

"I would have to think twice about flying with Zoom again. At this rate I won't be arriving into London till 11 p.m."

Zoom officials were not available last night for comment on the latest delay.