Technical problem at NATS causes cancellations and delays at British airports

Hundreds of flights departing from the main British airports were interrupted this Tuesday (8) after NATS, a provider of air traffic control services, faced a technical problem.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted are among the airports affected by cancellations and delays. According to the BBC, to date, 200 flights have been cancelled.

"We identified that the issue was with our flight processing system. Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible," NATS said in a statement.

"Flights continue to take off and airspace is open, but normalization will take some time."

Heathrow, the UK's largest airport, said it was working with NATS to resolve the issue.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 reported on social media that arrivals and departures were being regulated at airports in the London flight information region due to the issue.

Around 100 flights were canceled at Heathrow alone and 367 were delayed at the UK's main airport, according to data from flight tracking platform FlightAware. Around 250 flights were delayed at Gatwick — approximately 31% of the total —, according to the data.

Edinburgh Airport said in a post on X that the problem could affect its operations. Dublin Airport, in Ireland, reported that arriving and departing flights were also experiencing interruptions.

Other airports reporting delays or cancellations included Luton Airport (in London) and Birmingham Airport, as well as Aberdeen and Glasgow. Dublin Airport said some arriving and departing flights would be delayed.

British Airways said it was experiencing flight disruptions due to the issue.

"This is completely outside of our control, and we are in contact with our customers as our teams work to make their travel possible as quickly as possible," the airline said in a statement.

EasyJet said the issue was causing delays across Europe.

Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic were not immediately available for comment.

Tuesday's delays follow previous incidents that caused serious disruption.

In 2024, the British aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for system failures, after automatic processing of flight plans malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos at UK airports. Airline executives said the episode cost more than 100 million pounds ($135.49 million) in refunds and compensation.

In July last year, a radar-related technical failure in Britain's air traffic control system halted flights for more than four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow.