UK air traffic control fault leaves hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled
NATS says its flight data processing system has been restored, but airlines and regulators are demanding accountability over the disruption.
Hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled at major UK airports on Tuesday after a technical fault in National Air Traffic Services’ flight data processing system.
NATS said the issue had been resolved and that its operations had returned to normal, while staff worked to clear the resulting backlog. Heathrow and Gatwick were among the airports affected.
Flight-tracking platform FlightAware recorded about 490 departure delays and about 525 cancelled or delayed arrivals at six airports, including London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol, at 15:18 GMT. The figures were a snapshot and may have changed as services recovered.
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been affected by delays of up to eight hours and that it had cancelled more than 50 flights. Airlines called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign and urged the UK government to intervene.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority said it expected NATS to provide a full report on the failure before considering whether reforms were needed to strengthen the reliability of the country’s air traffic control system.
