By Sam Tabahriti and Joanna Plucinska
LONDON, Sept 8 – Flights at major British airports were disrupted on Tuesday by a technical fault at air traffic control provider NATS, the latest in a series of failures that renewed questions about the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure. NATS said at 1934 BST that the issue, which had impacted its flight data processing system, has been resolved. Data on flight-tracking platform FlightAware said some 490 departures were delayed at six airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol as of 1518 GMT. Some 525 arrivals at those six airports were either cancelled or delayed, the website data shows. At Heathrow, 38 of 661 scheduled arrivals had been cancelled or were unable to operate, according to aviation analytics company Cirium. British Airways was the most affected carrier at the airport, cancelling 16 of 333 scheduled departures. In 2024, the CAA said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the automatic processing of flight plans had malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos across Britain’s airports. Airline bosses said that outage had cost them over £100 million in refunds and compensation.
It had earlier said that “safety was not compromised. Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” NATS said on X. Britain’s aviation regulator said it would expect NATS to share a full report of Tuesday’s incident. The Civil Aviation Authority said it would then consider whether any further steps need to be taken to secure the reliability of the UK’s air traffic control system.
The cancellation of hundreds of flights and delays to hundreds more renews scrutiny on NATS three years after a flight-plan processing failure caused even more widespread disruption. EUROPE’S TRAFFIC-FILLED SKIES Air traffic control is a tightly timed system in Europe’s extremely busy skies. This article was generated from an automated news agency feed without modifications to text.
In July last year, a radar-related technical issue in Britain’s air traffic control system disrupted flights for over four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow. As passengers waited for information in departure halls across the country on Tuesday, airlines questioned whether the country’s air traffic control system was fit for purpose. “Recovery from today’s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped. HUNDREDS OF FLIGHTS DELAYED AND MANY CANCELLED Close to a thousand flights were disrupted on Tuesday, including to and from the largest UK airport, Heathrow.
Ryanair Chief Operating Officer Neal McMahon said. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its current form,” Wizz Air said. “How many more failures do passengers have to suffer before overpaid failure NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns? NATS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McMahon’s statement. Wizz Air also called for urgent reform of the air traffic controller, saying airlines, passengers and airports should not continue to bear the consequences of recurring system failures. “A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill.
Impact of UK Airport Outages on Airline Operations
Recent disruptions in UK airports have led to significant delays and cancellations for airlines, notably affecting Ryanair. The airline reported that over 65,000 passengers experienced delays of up to eight hours, with more than 50 flights cancelled.
Aviation analyst John Strickland highlighted the severe consequences of even brief outages, stating that the impact can ripple through the tightly coordinated schedules of airline networks. He noted that while a few hours of outage may seem limited, the overall effect is substantial when many airports are involved.
Ryanair has called for the resignation of NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe in light of these disruptions.
