Technical fault at UK air traffic control disrupts flights at major airports

Summary Hundreds of flights departing from major British airports faced disruption on Tuesday after air traffic control provider NATS experienced a technical malfunction, affecting operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted among other hubs across the country. British Airways confirmed it was experiencing disruption across its flight schedule because of the technical issue, saying in a statement that the situation was entirely outside its control and that its teams were working directly with affected customers to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible. A separate radar related technical fault in July of last year disrupted flights for more than four hours at major airports across London, including Heathrow, underscoring recurring vulnerabilities within the country's air traffic control infrastructure. AI Generated Summary Hundreds of flights departing from major British airports faced disruption on Tuesday after air traffic control provider NATS experienced a technical malfunction, affecting operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted among other hubs across the country. NATS said in a statement that engineers had identified the issue within its flight processing system and were working on site to restore normal operations as quickly as possible. The organization said flights were still able to depart and that airspace remained open throughout the disruption, though it cautioned that a full recovery would take some time. Heathrow, Britain's busiest airport, said it was working closely with NATS to help resolve the problem. Flight tracking service Flightradar24 said on social media that both arrivals and departures were being regulated across airports within the London flight information region as a direct result of the malfunction. According to data from flight tracking platform FlightAware, roughly 100 flights were cancelled at Heathrow alone, with an additional 367 delayed. At Gatwick, about 250 flights, or roughly 31 percent of the day's total schedule, experienced delays. Edinburgh Airport said in a social media post that its operations could also be affected by the ongoing issue, while Dublin Airport in Ireland confirmed that both arriving and departing flights were experiencing disruption as a result of the fault. Additional delays and cancellations were reported at London Luton Airport, Birmingham Airport, and airports in Aberdeen and Glasgow. British Airways confirmed it was experiencing disruption across its flight schedule because of the technical issue, saying in a statement that the situation was entirely outside its control and that its teams were working directly with affected customers to get them to their destinations as quickly as possible. EasyJet said the malfunction was causing delays across its broader European network. Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic did not immediately respond to requests for comment on how the disruption was affecting their operations. Tuesday's disruption follows a series of earlier incidents that caused significant problems across Britain's aviation sector. In 2024, the country's aviation regulator said NATS needed to strengthen its contingency planning for system outages after a malfunction in the automatic processing of flight plans caused widespread chaos at British airports the previous year. Airline executives estimated that the earlier failure cost the industry more than 100 million pounds in passenger refunds and compensation payments. A separate radar related technical fault in July of last year disrupted flights for more than four hours at major airports across London, including Heathrow, underscoring recurring vulnerabilities within the country's air traffic control infrastructure. The repeated nature of these incidents has prompted renewed scrutiny of NATS and its systems, with airlines and regulators alike pushing for stronger safeguards to prevent similar large scale disruptions from recurring during peak travel periods in the future.