{"id":888462,"date":"2026-09-08T22:28:15","date_gmt":"2026-09-08T22:28:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/888462\/"},"modified":"2026-09-08T22:28:15","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T22:28:15","slug":"air-traffic-control-problem-disrupts-flights-across-u-k","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/888462\/","title":{"rendered":"Air traffic control problem disrupts flights across U.K."},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hundreds of flights were cancelled on Tuesday due to a technical problem in Britain’s air traffic control system that caused disruptions at major airports across the U.K.<\/p>\n

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said a problem was identified in its flight processing system, which affected flights across the U.K.<\/p>\n

The cancellations and delays renewed scrutiny of NATS three years after a flight-plan processing failure caused even more widespread disruption. <\/p>\n

By Tuesday afternoon, NATS said the issue affecting its flight \u200bdata processing system had been resolved. It had earlier said that “safety was not compromised.”<\/p>\n

“Recovery from today\u2019s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped. Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard \u200bas possible to clear the backlog of flights,” NATS said on X. <\/p>\n

It later said \u200bin an update that it would take time to recover from the disruption, and that “this has been a very complex recovery and has \u2060created difficulties for the whole aviation network.”<\/p>\n

CEO Martin \u2060Rolfe told Sky News that NATS hadn’t yet “fully done the investigation” to find cause of the problem.<\/p>\n

\u2139\ufe0f Technical issue
Recovery from today\u2019s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped . Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights. (1\/2) https:\/\/t.co\/NpFp3PBDo7<\/a><\/p>\n

\u2014NATS<\/a><\/p>\n

“We don’t have an idea yet of exactly what went wrong,” Rolfe said. <\/p>\n

At least 625 flights to and from U.K. airports, including London Heathrow, were cancelled, affecting services operated by multiple airlines, such as British Airways, EasyJet, KLM and Lufthansa, according to Flightradar24.<\/p>\n

Some passengers took to social media to complain about being stuck on the tarmac for hours before their flights were eventually cancelled. Many expressed frustration about a lack of communication from airlines.<\/p>\n

\"PeopleStranded passengers use their phones at Heathrow Airport’s Terminal 5 on Tuesday. Some expressed frustration over a lack of communication from airlines about the delays. (Isabel Infantes\/Reuters)<\/p>\n

The affected airports included Stansted and City in London, as well as those in Manchester, Birmingham, Gatwick and Scotland. They warned passengers to check the status of their flight with their airline.<\/p>\n

Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” and that the system failure caused “delays to flights across Europe.”<\/p>\n

Calls for resignations, reform<\/p>\n

Ryanair said around 150,000 of its passengers had been affected by delays of up to eight hours and that it had cancelled more than 200 flights, and called on Rolfe to resign. <\/p>\n

“How many more failures do passengers have to suffer \u200bbefore overpaid failure NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?” Ryanair Chief Operating Officer Neal McMahon said.<\/p>\n

NATS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McMahon’s statement.<\/p>\n

Wizz Air \u2060also called for urgent reform of the air traffic controller, saying airlines, passengers and airports should not continue to bear the consequences of recurring \u2060system failures.<\/p>\n

“A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its \u2060current \u2060form,” Wizz Air said.<\/p>\n

Britain’s aviation regulator said it would \u200bexpect NATS to share a full report of Tuesday’s incident. <\/p>\n

The Civil Aviation Authority said \u2060it would then consider whether any further steps need to be taken to secure the reliability of the U.K.’s air traffic control system. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Listen to this article Estimated 3 minutes The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":888463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[45,49,48],"class_list":["post-888462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ca","tag-canada"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888462","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=888462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/888462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/888463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=888462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=888462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=888462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}