“p out there actually... ryanair is up there. really, british airways have to look at this from the bottom up to look at this from the bottom up to make sure these things work. there are disaster recovery systems. they should have clicked in immediately. if they are cutting corners on it, this is happening, as a supposition the shareholders should be angry, very angry indeed. you cannot cut back on these systems, we rely on computing. if something goes wrong, it has a knock—on effect. it causes no end problems. its chorus it means air cargo operation will be cut, will be hit. the assignments heading for aircraft, won't be loaded. they could track baggage from airport to airport by road to catch up. some passengers might have to leave their baggage behind and they will deliver its later. that usually means four

oi’ its later. that usually means four or five days later. this is a bank holiday weekend, a major holiday weekend. my heart goes out to everybody, but i am afraid they are stuck with it. a huge disappointment. thank you. thank you forjoining us, it would be great to hear from british airways, we would be glad to hear from you! let's take a look at the weather forecast with stav. although many southern and south—eastern areas have enjoyed a fine afternoon, different story further north, northern england seeing flash flooding and thunderstorms. those storms will continue to move into central southern scotland, tending to peter out overnight, a legacy of cloud and rainfor out overnight, a legacy of cloud and rain for northern and western scotland. further south, a dry night with clear spells, fresher than recently. into sunday, the northern half of the country will hang on to the cloud, cloudy all day, feeling cooler. central and southern areas

will see warm sunshine, across the south more showers with thunderstorms pushing their way northwards. again, a fairly warm, humid day, cooler and fresher further north and west. bank holiday monday is looking cloudy, outbreaks of heavy and thundery rain across northern and eastern areas, a risk of storms pushing into the south—east later on, where it will be warm, elsewhere cooler and fresher. hello, this is bbc news with martine croxall, the headlines at a30. british airways cancels all flights at heathrow and gatwick until at least six o'clock this evening after a global computer system failure. ba says it's working to resolve the problem. passengers have reported chaotic scenes. currently, as you can see behind me, there is a huge queue waiting for any information. my main concern now is that i don't want my 80—year—old grandma

spending the night on the heathrow floor. the terror threat level in the uk, which was increased to the highest status of critical following the manchester bombing, has been reduced to severe. there will be more arrests and more searches, but this greater clarity has led jtac, the independent body assesses an attack is no longer imminent. police and army bomb—disposal experts have been evacuating an area of moss side as part of an ongoing search now on bbc news, exclusive access to priceless archival footage taken by young adventurers exploring parts of the world that were completely new to western eyes. this is great explorations. historic moments captured on film from a bygone age. we have been given exclusive access

to a priceless archive — from places that were new to western eyes. many of these films, from the frozen mountains of the himalayas to the searing libyan desert, have not seen the light of day for a hundred years. sons and daughters of the pioneering explorers see their fathers‘ remarkable footage for the very first time. to see this film makes me feel very proud of him. i'm in awe of what he managed to do. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. these are some of britain's great explorations. the british film institute's national archive is a treasure trove of britain's past. among the thousands of films stored in this vault are some shot

by young explorers as they travelled to unexplored parts of the globe. now they're being digitised and put online so that we can all relive their incredible stories. among them is this film, released by gaumont british in 193a. it's the first flight over mount everest. this view from the top of mount everest had never been seen before. the footage is also helping scientists today learn more about the impact of climate change. will you give me a hand with this strap? certainly! it was shot by major latham valentine stewart blacker, a former fighter pilot and war hero. he was a real—life biggles. the film is a staged re—enactment of the first flight over everest, but it includes the actual aerial footage shot during the expedition and stars the original aviators.

well, do you realise you could put everest on the map in three hours? you're still thinking of the alps. why not? a good plane, camera shooting down, and you could record every detail. i wonder... don't be fooled by the ham acting — this film won an oscar. the men risked their lives, flying higher than anyone had flown before to capture this historic footage. wings over everest is part of the royal geographical society's archive of expeditions it sponsored in the early part of the 20th century. what was the motivation? what was the purpose of the society? scientific exploration and improve understanding of the world, its people and places.

the society has a collection of over two million items, it's the world's largest collection of geographically related maps, photographs, artefacts, diaries, notebooks and publications. and this film collection, which has been housed for the society at the british film institute for many years, is the last portion of our collections that has not been made more accessible. this is the earliest known film of tibet. it was shown in cinemas all across the uk. audiences were gripped by this astonishing footage of a strange and mysterious new world. they were taken by a young army officer on the first attempt to reach the summit of mount everest in 1922. before they set off, the climbers seek a blessing at a monastery.

they're treated as honoured guests and shown ritual dances. this one is a tale of reincarnation. around their waists are aprons made from a lattice of human bones. and theirface masks are made from stretched human skin. the cameraman was captainjohn noel. although it was shown in cinemas, his daughter has actually never seen the film — until now. he suggested to the mount everest committee that they took film, and they pooh—poohed this idea, said, "no, it would have vulgarise the expedition." but he nevertheless persuaded them, and he said, you know, "this is a record that we need to make, like scott of the antarctic." this was going to be a world event. it was a bit like the moon landings. yes, it was, it was, yes, we'd just come back through the war, you know, we were impoverished, people had very little

to be excited about, and here was this expedition to mount everest. john noel climbed treacherous rock faces with his camera equipment by day, and by night he would develop his footage. he had this purpose—built tent he'd taken with him to base camp, and at night, using water from the glaciers and yak dung as a source of heat, he processed 10,000 feet of film on the mountain to be sure that he'd got the right composition and good exposures. what was your father's motivation? it was the fact that it had not been climbed, a feeling of doing this for king and country, and that it should be the british who should at least make an attempt on the mountain. you see, they're just strolling around in very casual clothes. but it does look as though it's a sort of ramble in the lake district, doesn't it? yes! it was all hand—knitted at home and tweed jackets.

there's a lovely photograph of my father with a pocket handkerchief and a tie down at base camp! mount everest, that's how he prepared? ever the gentleman, you know, i mean, that's how they presented themselves. i think not only were they born in the victorian era, but i think the war had moulded them. they had seen so much carnage that they were ready for anything. and it made them very stoic and fearless. they went into the unknown without any consideration for their safety. and the footage is of scientific as well as historical value. it's just absolutely fabulous, these images from 1922. david breashears has literally followed in captain noel‘s footsteps, and he's taken his own images of mount everest from the very same places as the early explorers. and here is the glacier we're looking at right here,

the east rongbuk glacier is the glacier here, right through here. he provides the old and new images to scientists. they use them to determine the impact climate change has had on the himalayas over the past hundred years. but until now, he's only had a handful of still images from the early expeditions. so the availability of captain noel‘s footage will give him — and climate scientists — much more data to work with. the historic imagery in the archives of the royal geographical society is this unlimited gift and a treasure to scientists. these are time—stamped images, essentially. we know when they were taken and where they were taken. we can find the same positions and take a picture of the exact same place and very clearly, and with extremely high resolution, take note of the difference. and all that difference is in loss — loss of a mass in the glacier.

it sends the same it's irrefutable, it's clear, it sends the same signal to all who see it. in the end, captain noel and his fellow climbers' attempt to reach the summit failed. they came so close — they were just half a kilometre short of the summit. at these high altitudes, the air became too thin for them, and so they were forced to turn back. they were just overwhelmed by everything, the terrain, the difficulty of the climb, this constant wind, which i think they weren't expecting. but the team had climbed higher than anyone had climbed before and laid the groundwork for the eventual ascent to the summit just 30 years later by tenzing norgay and sir edmund hillary. here at the bfi, conservation specialists

are painstakingly restoring 138 films of some of britain's greatest explorations, frame by frame. one of them is of a young army officer crossing the vast expanse of the libyan desert by motorcar. ralph bagnold and his friends are on a journey that will take them into uncharted territory. bagnold was a pioneer of desert exploration. he was an army officer stationed in egypt. his expeditions involve striving thousands of miles into the blistering heat of the libyan desert. no—one had crossed it. no, no—one had crossed it, no—one had crossed it by car before. his son stephen has heard stories of these incredible expeditions, but it's the first time he's seen them. that's my father driving there, and you can see the bonnet is off, and you can see the pipe running from the radiator into the... that was a modification?

that was the modification to prevent loss of water through evaporation, through the radiator. it was a journey that pushed bagnold, his men and the cars to their very limits. they had to take everything they needed to survive with them. it was all rationed, water, i think it was three pints a day — one at breakfast, one at lunch... all for drinking, you washed in the sand, you washed your plates and stuff in the sand. they travelled thousands of miles across the featureless terrain. bagnold invented a sun compass which enabled them to navigate with incredible position. they never strayed more than a mile from their intended destination. the experts proclaimed it couldn't be done. and not, i think, because he wanted to show them who was the master, butjust because it tickled his fancy that maybe,

with clear planning and with the right equipment and stuff, there could be a way. when one of the cars broke down, it was cannibalised for spare parts and abandoned — and they're still out there somewhere, buried among the dunes. the vehicles would often get stuck in the sand, and each time bagnold and his team would find ever more ingenious ways of extricating them. it looks as though they are using strips of metal that they bought in cairo that had been intended to go on the roof, but it appeared to do the job well. they're basically laying tracks — or a surface from which the car can get out. 0nce out, you had to keep going, otherwise you'd just sink again into the same patch of soft sand. bagnold took careful measurements to understand how the sand is moved by the wind. he wrote several books on the subject and was elected to the royal society, a group of the country's most distinguished scientists.

to see this film makes me feel very proud of him, of course, and i'm in awe of what he managed to do. his research has helped nasa explore mars. these features on the martian surface are named the bagnold dunes in honour of the great explorer. all the wheels are coming into alignment. abbie hutty has taken up his legacy. she's developing europe's first mars rover at this test—bed in stevenage outside london. abbie is trying to develop new ways to cross the martian sand — just as bagnold did in libya 80 years earlier. he was the first one to really look at the materials that the sand was made out of, and the wind forces and the distribution, and how friction played a part

and all of those things, and that's how we predict what it's going to be like on mars. it's all about that dry, dusty nature of the sand, and trying to drive over that without sinking into it — that's our biggest challenge. i really do think he'd be absolutely delighted, amazed and delighted if he knew that the work he'd done all that time ago had an application, and a very real application, to the exploration of mars — i think he'd be tickled pink. this is the bfi's grading room, where the final adjustments are made before the films are released to the public. this one is from a news bulletin from 1951 which may well be one of the first examples of fake news. we're off on the track of that abominable snowman, and our first clues are these footprints,

photographed by eric shipton, leader of the 1951 everest expedition... so what made the footprints? some zoologists thought that the himalayan bear, seen here, might be the snowman. or maybe it's the american mountain bear — but if so, how did he wander into tibet? the experts were baffled. here, we can compare the plaster casts of various animal footprints with the photos published in the times. but was it really all just a publicity stunt for the times newspaper, which was raising money for the next everest expedition? meantime, everest guards says her secret. i think it's more about how the story is used by the times to promote awareness of this attempt in ‘51, so today, i suppose, we would see it as being a kind of a hook for news. in 1951, it's the year in london of the festival of london, so there's a huge resurgence in optimism after the second world war, and the whole idea that britain is going to try to reach the summit of everest first is taking shape.

thousands of miles away in yemen, a pilot, aubrey rickards, filmed the hadhramaut, a region that is home to an ancient civilisation. the film shows skyscrapers built in the 16th century — from mud. some are 11 storeys high. there are even whitewashed mud constructions that look like vast grand palaces. they're still inhabited to this day. this was the first metropolis. it's the very first film footage of yemen. from the air, you see the extraordinary landscape of the hadhramaut, which is an area full of wadis, where water would flow down and enabled human habitation from prehistory onwards.

and what you're seeing is what i think is one of the most extraordinarily sophisticated developments of urban living, because you have people living in adobe—constructed, mud—constructed multistorey habitations. the first skyscrapers. they're often described as the manhattan of the desert. in the actual manhattan, during the late ‘60s, eastern mysticism was popularised by the hippy culture of the time. young people in many western countries were inspired to find love, peace and harmony in their lives. but these ideas have their roots in asia, from films shot in the 1930s across the himalayan ranges, of journeys through bhutan and tibet.

the men who shot this footage thought they had discovered paradise among the himalayan mountains. george sherriff and frank ludlow filmed scenes of a simpler way of life, where people were happy, content, and lived to a ripe old age. they stumbled on what they thought was a brighter, more hopeful world — a contrast to the grim desolation of europe after the first world war. this map, dug out from the archives of the royal geographical society by professor michael heffernan, shows seven of sherriff and ludlow‘s expeditions. well, essentially, it's these remarkable routes they took along a river valley, and their primary concern was essentially to map the area,

so this is a sort of sketch map produced at the end of all of their expeditions. when sherriff and ludlow begin their expeditions in this area of tibet in 1933, it's exactly the same year whenjames hilton publishes lost horizon, which introduces the idea of shangri—la, this kind of perfect place. this was a mountain kingdom, a vestigial world of peace and harmony, precisely the world that had been so obviously left behind by industrial warfare that they'd gone through, the world where people could live extraordinary long lives of peace and harmony. and a better world. 450 feet of rock soaring out of the north atlantic,

known as the old man of hoy, and a very crumbling old man he is. in1967, 15 million people in the uk watched live asjoe brown and five others took on the old man of hoy in 0rkney, off the coast of scotland. we just had a bit of a slight tangle in the rope there, which stopped me pulling the rope into the carabiner to secure myself. he was then, and still is, among the world's most well—known climbers. but his greatest achievement was nearly 30 years earlier in the himalayas, scaling the unclimbed mountain of kangchenjunga. it's almost as high as everest but harder to climb. some of his fellow mountaineers were involved in the successful ascent of everest two years earlier. they were climbing royalty — joe was a builder from manchester. this was my kangchenjunga axe that i was supplied with.

joe recalls how surprised he was when the expedition leader asked him tojoin. when i received a telegram, saying, "invited on kangchenjunga expedition, letter following, wants to meet you in london, et cetera," i was... i mean, it wasjust incredible, ijust couldn't believe it. the mountain was prone to avalanches, and its terrain was treacherous — butjoe was fearless. that's me. camp 1 was actually in a crevasse, and while we were there, i decided to go and take a bathroom break, so i walked without any fear until i got round the corner, where there was this massive hole. it was the deepest, biggest

crevasse i'd ever seen, and i was standing on the same thin bridge that was on the opposite side of the hole, so i very carefully turned around and tried to make myself weightless and crept back round the corner to where it was solid. but it was very nervy stuff. job and his fellow climber george band stopped just short of the summit. it was a promise they'd made to the nepalese authorities — to respect local beliefs that the peak was home to the gods. i got to the top, but ijust pulled over, and there was just a snow cone rising up about 15 or 20 feet. i shouted down to him, "we're there, george." and the feeling is not of whoopee — you just think, "i don't have to go any further!" it's just a fantastic

feeling of relief. these great explorations are from an age when the first portable film cameras made it possible for a mass audience to see many of the world's most inaccessible wonders for the very first time. adventurers risked their lives to explore a world that still held so many mysteries. and now we're all able to see what they saw, as they journeyed to the ends of the earth, drawn by the thrill of the unknown, and spurred on by challenge that they found irresistible. although many southern and south—eastern areas have enjoyed a fine afternoon, different story further north, northern england seeing flash flooding and thunderstorms. those storms will continue to move into central southern scotland, tending to peter out overnight, a legacy of cloud and rain for northern and western scotland. further south, a dry night with clear spells, fresher than recently. into sunday, the northern half of the country will hang on to the cloud, cloudy all day, feeling cooler.

central and southern areas will see warm sunshine, across the south more showers with thunderstorms pushing their way northwards. again, a fairly warm, humid day, cooler and fresher further north and west. bank holiday monday is looking cloudy, outbreaks of heavy and thundery rain across northern and eastern areas, a risk of storms pushing into the south—east later on, where it will be warm, elsewhere cooler and fresher. hello, this is bbc news. i'm martine croxall. the headlines at five: british airways extends its cancellation of all flights at heathrow and gatwick for the rest of the day after a global computer system failure. there is a huge queue waiting for any information. i do not want 80—year—old grandmother ‘s spending the night on the floor. the terror threat level in the uk, which was increased to the highest to the highest status of critical following the manchester bombing has been reduced to severe.

severe means an attack is highly likely. the country should remain vigilant. police and army bomb disposal experts have been evacuating an area of moss side as part of an ongoing search linked to the