Nats said it was ‘investigating a technical issue’ in its flight processing system, causing widespread UK flight cancellations and airport travel disruption at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham
Desperate scenes have unfolded at Stansted Airport as passengers are crammed into departures in their thousands, with no sign of any progress of the runway after at least 10 of the UK’s airports went into meltdown.While four or five flights have been cancelled, the bulk of those at the airport remain in purgatory, with flight attendants and Stansted employees freely admitted they “don’t know what’s going on”, says Daily Star reporter Ed Easton who is currently stranded.He said: “Information boards were until recently still telling passengers to head to the gates, meaning they’ve becoming dangerously overcrowded, with people having to push and shove their way in and out. Heathrow is full, Gatwick is full, Luton is full. There is nowhere for us to go – that’s what an engineer just told me.”
NATS, a global leader in air traffic management, has warned recovery from disruptions to flights departing the UK caused by an air traffic control problem will “take some time” after more than 400 flights were axed.
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 busiest airport in west London, confirmed it was amongst those hit but said arriving flights were “currently not affected” in a statement on Tuesday afternoon. However, in a subsequent update, Heathrow said the problem was “impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports”.
Manchester Airport Group, the firm that runs Manchester Airport, Stansted Airport in Essex and East Midlands Airport in Leicestershire, said flights from all three had been affected by the problem.
Jersey Airport in the Channel Islands, London City Airport, London Southend, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Southampton and Belfast airports said they were also experiencing some disruption.
Some 425 flights were axed to and from UK airports as of 5pm following the problem, flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said.
Passengers have been urged to check the latest flight information with their airlines, while airports apologised for the disruption caused. Nats, the company that provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, has stated it is “investigating a technical issue” causing disruption to some flight departures, and later identified the problem as being within its “flight processing system”.
The firm 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 announced it had “implemented a fix” and its flight system was “starting to recover.” The airports most severely impacted are Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, according to Flightradar24, which reported approximately 4% of UK flights have been cancelled or delayed due to 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 total average operations of 850. 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.”
The initial report of the problem emerged through Eurocontrol at 1.17pm, Mr Petchenik said.
Katherina Wilken and her partner were supposed to be flying back from Heathrow to Düsseldorf in Germany on Tuesday afternoon. Ms Wilken said she began to “panic” when at 3pm she had no gate information for her flight scheduled for 2.45pm, which was said to be delayed until 3.25pm.
The 26-year-old said she and her partner are now expected to depart Heathrow at around 7am on Wednesday. “We waited a long time because the display only said delayed for a long time and then that didn’t change,” she said.
She added: “It’s way too stressful to stay in a hotel miles away, we will probably stay here (at the airport) tonight.”
Chris Knaggs, 67, was supposed to fly to Málaga from Gatwick at 7.10pm on Tuesday but has discovered his flight has been delayed until 11.45pm. The retired government worker told the Press Association: “We had a message from EasyJet saying there’s going to be a delay and to wait for more information. Other than that, we’re trying to pick up information off the news. “
Mr Knaggs, from south London, discovered the delay through the airline’s website, which is currently running more than four hours behind schedule. “If it gets much further on, there’s a danger of it being cancelled,” he added.
Mr Knaggs said that once they touch down in Malaga, they will need to travel for three hours to reach their accommodation, meaning they probably won’t arrive until around 7am on Wednesday.
In a post on X, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was aware of the problem and that engineers were “fixing it as we speak”. “I know this will be frustrating for passengers and I’m sorry,” she added.
Budget carrier EasyJet said some of its flights are “unable to operate” following the problem 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 occurred 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, over 700,000 passengers faced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports due to a technical glitch with Nats while processing a flight plan.
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