More than 100 flights were cancelled and several others were delayed on Wednesday after a technical glitch in the UK’s air traffic control system caused significant disruption at major airports across the country.
The issue, described by the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) as radar-related, briefly suspended departures at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Birmingham, Cardiff, Edinburgh, and London City airports.
Although the problem was reportedly resolved within 20 minutes by switching to a backup system, knock-on delays and cancellations lasted for several hours, affecting thousands of passengers.
NATS later confirmed that systems were “fully operational” and air traffic capacity was returning to normal, but acknowledged the disruption and apologised for the inconvenience caused.
Ryanair, one of the most affected carriers, claimed the disruption lasted over four hours and echoed concerns raised during a similar outage in August 2023, which had also been blamed on system failures.
Neal McMahon, CEO of Ryanair, criticised the handling of the situation and called for the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe.
“It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption,” McMahon said.
“It is clear that no lessons have been learnt since the August 2023 NATS system outage,” he added.
Airports and airlines advised travellers to check with their carriers before heading to the airport, as recovery operations continued into the evening.
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With inputs from Reuters
