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Air travel across the United Kingdom descended into chaos on Tuesday after a technical failure in the country’s air traffic control system disrupted more than 600 flights at several major airports, including London Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
According to FlightRadar24, 625 flights have been cancelled, and the number continued to rise as the disruption spread. Out of these, easyJet had 218 of its flights cancelled, British Airways 132, KLM 37, Eurowings 22 and Ryanair reported 41 cancelled flights.
Flight-tracking data has also indicated that the tally is expected to rise as the impact continued to ripple through airline schedules.
What caused the flight disruptions?
The disruption was linked to a technical problem in the flight processing system of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), the body that manages air traffic across the UK.
NATS initially said it was investigating a technical issue affecting flight departures. It later confirmed that the problem was within its flight processing system and that engineers were working urgently to restore normal operations.
NATS later said it had implemented a fix and that its system had started to recover. However, it warned that restoring normal flight schedules would take time because of the backlog created by the outage.
The disruptions did not mean that UK airspace was completely closed. NATS said flights were still departing and that UK airspace remained open, but the technical failure severely reduced the ability to process and manage flights efficiently.
Affected airports
London’s Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City airports were among the worst affected. Manchester, Birmingham, Luton, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Aberdeen also reported disruption.
At Heathrow, around 100 flights had been cancelled and hundreds more delayed, according to flight-tracking data cited by Reuters. Gatwick also recorded hundreds of delays.
Manchester Airport was also affected, along with Stansted and East Midlands airports, which are operated by Manchester Airports Group.
The disruption also extended beyond the UK. Some inbound flights were held at airports elsewhere in Europe, while aircraft were diverted to airports including Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and Düsseldorf.
Air traffic control and flight operations
Air traffic control systems are closely linked to airline schedules, airport operations and flight planning. When the processing system used by NATS develops a major fault, flights cannot continue at their normal frequency.
In that case, departures have to be restricted or delayed to maintain safe traffic levels. Once aircraft and crews are out of position, the disruption can spread to subsequent flights, even after the original technical problem has been fixed.
The NATS warned that the knock-on effects could continue for several hours and potentially into Wednesday.
India-UK flights hit too
The disruption also affected long-haul operations involving the UK, with passengers travelling between India and Britain facing delays and cancellations, specifically on flights operating from Heathrow.
Heathrow is a major hub for India-UK travel, with airlines including Air India and British Airways operating services between London and Indian cities.
The impact on individual India-bound or UK-bound flights varied throughout the day, so passengers were advised to check their airline’s live flight status rather than rely solely on the original timetable. Heathrow also told passengers to travel to the airport only if their flight was confirmed.
Restoring operations could take till Wednesday
NATS apologised to passengers and said it had implemented a fix to the affected system.
The organisation said it was working with airlines and airports to recover the disrupted schedules, while warning that the recovery would take time.
Heathrow similarly advised passengers to check directly with their airlines for the latest information and not travel to the airport unless their flight was confirmed.
The disruption triggered strong criticism from airlines. Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers were affected and called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign. The airline argued that the latest incident showed that lessons had not been learned from previous failures.
Wizz Air also criticised NATS, arguing that repeated failures at a critical national infrastructure provider were unacceptable.
British Airways said the disruption was outside its control and that it was working to assist affected passengers. EasyJet said the problem was also causing delays across Europe.
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