Air Traffic Control Glitch Triggers Cancellation of Nearly 1,300 UK Flights

A major technical failure at Britain’s air traffic control provider NATS caused widespread disruption on Tuesday, with more than 1,000 flights cancelled and thousands of passengers affected across the UK.

FlightRadar24 reported that nearly 1,300 flights to and from British airports had been cancelled. Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Liverpool, Birmingham and Edinburgh were among the airports hit by the disruption, while Dublin Airport in Ireland also reported multiple cancellations.

NATS Confirms Technical Problem Resolved

NATS said the disruption was caused by a fault in its flight data processing system. The organisation later confirmed that the technical issue had been resolved, but warned that passengers would continue to face delays as airlines worked to clear the backlog.

NATS apologised for the disruption and said its systems were operating normally again. However, the outage left aircraft and crew in the wrong locations, forcing airlines to cancel, delay or divert services.

Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport, suspended arrivals for the remainder of Tuesday, while departures continued amid significant disruption.

British Airways, Air India Services Hit

British Airways cancelled or diverted more than 100 flights, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. Ryanair also reported extensive disruption, saying more than 65,000 customers had been affected.

EasyJet, KLM and Eurowings were among the other airlines reporting cancellations. FlightRadar24 said 177 flights in London had already been cancelled on Wednesday, showing that the impact continued beyond Tuesday.

Air India warned passengers that some of its services could also be affected because aircraft and crew had been displaced by the disruption. The airline urged travellers to check their flight status before leaving for the airport.

Arsenal Among Those Caught Up In Chaos

The disruption even affected Arsenal’s Champions League preparations. The team was scheduled to travel to Naples for Wednesday’s match against Napoli, but a delay to its flight forced the club to cancel a planned press conference.

Outage Raises Fresh Concerns Over Aviation Network

The latest failure has renewed questions about the reliability of Britain’s air traffic control infrastructure.

It comes after a radar-related technical issue last year disrupted flights at major UK airports for more than four hours. In 2023, an even larger failure involving the automatic processing of flight plans caused hundreds of cancellations and delays and affected more than 700,000 passengers.

Ryanair Demands Action Against NATS

The latest outage has prompted strong criticism from airlines. Ryanair chief operating officer Neal McMahon called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to be removed, while Wizz Air demanded urgent reforms to the country’s air traffic control system.

McMahon accused NATS of repeated failures and called on the UK government to intervene. Ryanair said nearly 150,000 of its passengers had been affected and that it had cancelled more than 200 flights.

Cause Of Failure Still Unclear

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was seeking assurances that the incident would be investigated and that the systems supporting Britain’s aviation network were fit for purpose.

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the organisation had yet to determine exactly what caused the failure.

“We don’t have an idea yet of exactly what went wrong,” Rolfe said, confirming that an investigation was underway.

The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority said it expected NATS to provide a full report before deciding whether further action was needed to improve the reliability and resilience of the country’s air traffic control system.