UK air traffic control glitch grounds nearly 300 flights

Nearly 300 flights were cancelled across the UK on Tuesday after a technical problem in the air traffic control system disrupted operations at several major airports, with hundreds more flights delayed.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said engineers had identified the problem in its flight processing system and were working urgently to restore normal operations. “We have identified that the issue was in 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.

The air traffic control provider later said it had implemented a fix and that its flight system was beginning to recover. “Flights are still departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time,” NATS said earlier.

According to news agency AP, citing flight-tracking website Flightradar24, the technical issue disrupted departing flights across the London flight information region, with arrivals and departures being regulated as a result. Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted were among the airports affected. Heathrow said it was working with NATS to resolve the problem and advised passengers to check their flight status with their airline.

According to FlightAware data, about 100 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow, while 367 were delayed. At Gatwick, about 250 flights were delayed, accounting for roughly 31 per cent of the airport’s total flights, the data showed. Acccording to Reuters, other airports reporting disruptions included Luton, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Glasgow and Edinburgh. Edinburgh Airport said the issue might affect its operations, while Dublin Airport warned that some flights arriving from and departing for the UK would face delays.

British Airways said it was experiencing disruption because of the air traffic control problem. “This is entirely out of our control and we're in touch with our customers whilst our teams work to get them on their way as quickly as possible,” the airline said. EasyJet said the issue was causing delays across Europe. Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic were not immediately available for comment.

The disruption comes after previous NATS incidents. In 2024, Britain’s aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans after an automatic flight-plan processing failure the previous year caused widespread disruption. Airline bosses estimated the incident cost more than £100 million in refunds and compensation. A separate radar-related technical issue in July last year disrupted flights for more than four hours at major airports, including Heathrow.