Travellers with Sydney on their itinerary experienced hours-long delays on Saturday as Airservices Australia continued to navigate a significant shortfall in flight traffic controllers.

Disruptions at Sydney Airport — the country’s largest airport — were caused by “rostering and staffing issues” within air traffic control operations, forcing restrictions on the number of aircraft able to move through the airport.

Passengers travelling to, from or through Sydney have been told to expect significant delays.

Several Sydney-to-Perth flights experienced delays, with Qantas flight QF645 and Jetstar flight JQ986 tied for the longest at 2.5 hours each.

Virgin Australia flight VA555 was delayed by 1.5 hours, followed by Qantas flight QF649, which was held up for 1 hour.

The shortest delay was VA557 at 45 minutes. Flying from Perth to Sydney, Qantas flight QF650 showed a two-hour delay.

As many as 150 flights were delayed this morning across both international and domestic terminals, with Sydney Airport’s flight tracker showing a further 32 delayed between 2pm and 10pm AEST on Saturday evening.

Qantas reported 95 delays across its network, with 25 of those across QantasLink services.

Airservices Australia told 7News.com.au that it acknowledges the issues caused by the disruption.

“Airservices acknowledges the measures may cause some disruptions to airline scheduling and is working with airlines to reduce delays and the impact on passenger travel as much as possible,” it said in a statement.

It also confirmed it is “enhancing our training pipeline to add further controllers to improve roster depth and is working to address rostering issues that reduce the flexibility of our workforce”.

The company said it has continued to introduce air traffic flow management measures to manage the reduced capacity while maintaining safety.

Those flying are urged to check the departures and arrivals on Perth Airports website before leaving home to avoid further waiting.