Flights in and out of the UK have been significantly disrupted due to an air traffic control issue affecting airports including Heathrow and Gatwick, with cancellations and delays continuing into Tuesday evening. About 300 flights have been cancelled so far, flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said. Departures from London airports were most severely affected, with few take-offs since a fault was reported early on Tuesday afternoon.
Air traffic control service provider Nats said shortly before 5pm that it had fixed the problem in its system. Airlines renewed calls for the agency to be overhauled after the third major incident in just over three years. Most flights due to depart Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and London City airports since 2pm appeared to have been delayed or are yet to take off.
About 90 flights in and out of Heathrow and Gatwick had been cancelled by 4.15pm, according to data by analytics company Cirium. Flights from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh, Birmingham, Bristol and Belfast airports, were also affected. Ryanair said more than 65,000 passengers had been delayed with 50 flights cancelled.
The knock-on effects hit flights around Europe, according to easyJet. Eurocontrol said some inbound flights were being held at airports abroad, with disruption likely until the evening. The air traffic control service Nats said at 1.46pm that it was “investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures”.
Nats later identified the problem in its flight processing system, and at 4.40pm announced it had implemented a fix. However, it said the system was only “starting to recover”, adding: “We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery. We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline.” Heathrow originally said only departures were affected but a later statement confirmed that the Nats issue was “impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports”.
It added: “We are supporting our local Nats team in their efforts to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We apologise to those affected by the disruption and advise passengers to check with their airline for the latest flight information and only travel to the airport if their flight is confirmed.” British Airways said it was experiencing some disruption and was in touch with its customers. Belfast City airport warned of “some disruption” to flights after the technical issue affecting Nats.
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