Hundreds of flights cancelled after air traffic control 'technical issue' at major UK airports

Hundreds of departing flights from major British airports were disrupted on Tuesday ⁠after air traffic control provider NATS experienced a technical issue. Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted were among the hubs affected by cancellations and delays. NATS ​said ⁠in a statement it had implemented a fix and ​the ‌flight ⁠system ​was starting to ​recover. However, the knock-on effect was likely to last several hours. "Our ⁠engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible," it said initially. "Flights are still ‌departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time." Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander acknowledged the issue would be frustrating for passenger and apologised. Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on social media that arrivals and departures were being regulated at airports in the London flight information region because of the issue. About 100 flights were cancelled at Heathrow and 367 delayed, according to data on flight-tracking platform FlightAware. Some 250 flights were delayed at Gatwick, almost a third of the total, the data showed. Edinburgh Airport said in a post on X that the issue might affect its operations. Ireland's Dublin airport said flights leaving and arriving from there were also being disrupted. Other airports reporting delays or cancellations included London's Luton Airport and Birmingham Airport, as well as Aberdeen and Glasgow. Dublin Airport said some flights arriving to and ​departing from there would be subject to delays. British Airways said ‌it was experiencing disruption to flights because ⁠of the issue. "This is entirely out of ​our control and we're in touch with our customers whilst our teams work ​to get ‌them on their way as quickly as possible," the airline said in a statement. EasyJet said the issue ⁠was causing delays across Europe. Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic were not immediately available for ⁠comment. Tuesday's delays follow previous incidents that caused severe disruption. In 2024, Britain's aviation regulator 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 it had cost them over £100 ​million ($135.49 million) in refunds and compensation. 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.