Hundreds of flights faced cancellations in the U.K. on Tuesday due to technical glitches in Britain’s air traffic control system, leading to disruptions at major airports. The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) identified an issue in their flight processing system, impacting flights across the country. This incident brought back attention to NATS, as it comes three years after a significant flight-plan processing failure caused widespread disruption.
By Tuesday afternoon, NATS announced the resolution of the problem affecting its flight data processing system, reassuring that safety was maintained throughout. The organization acknowledged that the recovery process took longer than anticipated but confirmed that operations were back to normal, with efforts underway to clear the flight backlog.
CEO Martin Rolfe stated that a full investigation into the root cause of the problem was still pending. Notably, over 625 flights to and from U.K. airports, including London Heathrow, were canceled, affecting services from various airlines like British Airways, EasyJet, KLM, and Lufthansa according to Flightradar24.
Passengers expressed frustration on social media over being stranded on tarmacs for hours before their flights were canceled, highlighting poor communication from airlines. Affected airports such as Stansted, City in London, Manchester, Birmingham, Gatwick, and Scotland advised passengers to check flight statuses directly with their airlines.
Budget carrier EasyJet reported flight disruptions across Europe due to the system failure, while Ryanair cited around 150,000 affected passengers with delays of up to eight hours and more than 200 canceled flights. Ryanair’s Chief Operating Officer called for the resignation of NATS CEO Martin Rolfe due to repeated mismanagement issues.
Wizz Air also demanded urgent reform within the air traffic control sector, emphasizing that airlines, passengers, and airports should not bear the brunt of recurring system failures. The U.K.’s aviation regulator expects NATS to provide a comprehensive report on the incident, with potential further actions to ensure the reliability of the country’s air traffic control system.