Flight delay recovery caused by technical issue will ‘take some time'

Birmingham Airport said the issue was affecting airspace in the south of the UK and was 'impacting a significant number of departing flights across the country'. Heathrow Airport, the UK's largest airport in west London, confirmed it was among those impacted but said arriving flights were 'currently not affected' in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. However, in a later update, Heathrow said the issue was 'impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports'. ℹ️ Technical issue We have implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover. We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery. (1/2) https://t.co/MEDLS3UUWT — NATS (@NATS) September 8, 2026 Manchester Airport Group, the company that operates Manchester Airport, Stansted Airport in Essex and East Midlands Airport in Leicestershire, said flights from all three had been affected by the issue. Jersey Airport in the Channel Islands, London City Airport, London Southend, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Southampton and Belfast airports said they were also experiencing some disruption. Nearly 300 flights were cancelled on Tuesday afternoon because of the air traffic control issue, with that number expected to rise, flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said. Heathrow said arrivals were unaffected (Steve Parsons/PA) Passengers have been advised to check the latest flight information with their airlines, while airports apologised for the disruption caused. Nats, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said in a statement it was 'investigating a technical issue' causing disruption to some flight departures, and later said it had identified the problem was in its 'flight processing system'. The company said: 'Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible. 'We recognise the ongoing disruption to travel, for which we sincerely apologise. 'Flights are still departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time. We will provide further updates as soon as possible. 'Passengers should check the status of their flight with their airline.' Nats later said it had 'implemented a fix' and its flight system was 'starting to recover.' The worst affected airports are Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, according to Flightradar24, which said approximately 4% of UK flights have been cancelled or delayed as a result of the issue. The air tracker found 352 flights to and from Heathrow were delayed out of its daily average of about 1,300. Meanwhile, 281 Gatwick flights were delayed out of its 850 total operations average. This was 249 out of 650 for Manchester, and 101 out of 300 for Birmingham. FlightRadar24's director of communications, Ian Petchenik, told the Press Association: 'It's going to be major disruption not necessarily based on cancellations alone but certainly cancellations and delays including connecting flights. The 4% statistic is 'certainly much higher than normal but overall isn't a huge impact on operations quite yet'. 'I think we will start to see a further wave of cancellations. It sounds like Nats has resolved the issue but once the damage has been done it takes a little time to unwind, so I think we'll start to see cancellations increase for a while then decrease,' he added. The first report of the issue came through Eurocontrol at 1,17pm, Mr Petchenik said. In a post on X, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was aware of the issue and that engineers were 'fixing it as we speak'. 'I know this will be frustrating for passengers and I'm sorry,' she added. Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights are 'unable to operate' following the issue and that it was causing delays to flights across Europe. EasyJet said in a statement: 'We will do all we can minimise the impact of this for our customers including providing customers on flights unable to operate with their options including a free transfer or refund and meals and hotel accommodation for those who require them.' Last July, a 'radar-related issue' caused an air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the UK – disrupting thousands of passengers and forcing the cancellation of more than 160 flights. The problem happened at Nats' control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and affected the vast majority of England and Wales. A Government source said the failure lasted around 20 minutes, and the level of disruption was similar to a day with bad weather. In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.