Flight delay recovery caused by technical issue will ‘take some time’ – Nats

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”.

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.

Some 425 flights were cancelled to and from UK airports as of 5pm following the issue, flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said.

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.

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted as a result of the issue and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.

Meanwhile, British Airways said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.

“This incident was entirely out of our control and incredibly frustrating for our customers and colleagues, with aircraft and crews ending up out of place,” a spokesperson for the airline said.

“We’re doing everything we can to keep our customers updated and make arrangements for them to continue their journeys.”

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.

Katherina Wilken and her partner were due to be flying back from Heathrow to Dusseldorf in Germany on Tuesday afternoon.

Ms Wilken said she started 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 due 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 due to fly to Malaga from Gatwick at 7.10pm on Tuesday but has found out 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, found out through the airline’s website about the delay, which is currently more than four hours.

“If it gets much further on, there’s a danger of it being cancelled,” he added.

Mr Knaggs said that once they arrive in Malaga, they will have to travel for three hours to reach their accommodation, meaning they likely will not arrive until around 7am on Wednesday.

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 at the time that 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.