{"id":631605,"date":"2026-09-21T17:26:14","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T17:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631605\/"},"modified":"2026-09-21T17:26:14","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T17:26:14","slug":"airlines-demand-action-after-new-uk-traffic-control-issue","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/631605\/","title":{"rendered":"Airlines demand action after new UK traffic-control issue"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Airlines in the UK have demanded urgent action after another air traffic control issue caused widespread delays, including to 140 Ryanair flights.<\/p>\n<p>Flights have been delayed in Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England amid an air traffic control issue, National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/2026\/0908\/1590803-flight-disruptions\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">The company said the issue was unrelated to a software fault at NATS on 8 September, which caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled, disrupting hundreds of thousands of passengers.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Airports in Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester were registering delayed flights and urged passengers to check with their airlines.<\/p>\n<p>Luton Airport also said that domestic flights had been disrupted.<\/p>\n<p>A NATS spokesperson said today&#8217;s incident had been caused by a &#8220;connectivity issue&#8221; at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, which has since been fixed.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.rte.ie\/news\/uk\/2026\/0909\/1590829-uk-flight-disruption\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Airlines including Ryanair have previously called for the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe after the flight chaos earlier this month.<\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"A Flybe passenger jet takes off from Edinburgh Airport in Edinburgh, Scotland on May 5, 2010. Britain and Ireland grounded flights again Wednesday after a fresh cloud of ash swept in from the Icelandic volcano which sparked unprecedented air travel chaos in Europe last month. In a second day of re\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/00250b2f-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nFlights out of Edinburgh were affected<\/p>\n<p>Ryanair has said more than 25,000 of its passengers are expected to be disrupted and more than 140 of its flights had been delayed.<\/p>\n<p>Chief operations officer for Ryanair Neal McMahon said: &#8220;Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Enough is enough.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Martin Rolfe should resign today.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>EasyJet said the latest flight disruption &#8220;calls into question the resilience of NATS\u2019 systems&#8221;, and Jet2 said customers and airlines need &#8220;action, accountability and proper resilience&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;This, once again, calls into question the resilience of NATS\u2019 systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures,&#8221; easyJet said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We will do all we can to minimise the impact of this for our customers and advise anyone due to fly today to check our flight tracker for the latest information.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Passengers at Belfast International Airport\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/00250b44-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nPassengers were hit with delays and cancellations following the latest issues<\/p>\n<p>Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy said: &#8220;This morning\u2019s disruption comes days after NATS published a report into its latest major failure and it is simply not good enough for this critical national infrastructure to keep letting customers down.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;What customers and airlines need now is action, accountability and proper resilience, and we need it urgently.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines UK, said passengers and airlines &#8220;deserve better&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>He said: &#8220;Yet another NATS failure is causing delays and disruption for passengers and airlines alike, and comes just days after its report into the most recent major outage&#8221; and urged that &#8220;that these failures stop happening&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>British Airways said it was &#8220;disappointing&#8221; that some customers may experience disruption after &#8220;yet another technical fault with NATS&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>NATS said airports south of Manchester had been &#8220;broadly unaffected&#8221; today, but that flights heading north and departing from Scottish airports had been experiencing some delays.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption,&#8221; it added.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Taxiing the aircraft. Manchester Airport, Manchester, United Kingdom. Architect: n\/a, 2015. (Photo by: Hufton+Crow\/View Pictures\/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/00250b31-614.jpg\"\/><br \/>\nNATS said that airports south of Manchester, pictured, had been &#8216;broadly unaffected&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said in a post on X that engineers had &#8220;fixed the problem and systems are resuming&#8221;, but some delays may continue during the reset.<\/p>\n<p>A NATS spokesperson said: &#8220;The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologise for the disruption.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>An initial report by NATS into the flight chaos on 8 September found it was caused by a software defect and not by &#8220;any incorrect actions&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>The fault happened in &#8220;the space of a millisecond&#8221;, the report said.<\/p>\n<p>Last July a &#8220;radar-related issue&#8221; caused an air traffic control failure which disrupted thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation of more than 160 flights.<\/p>\n<p>In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when NATS experienced a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.<\/p>\n<p>NATS is the UK\u2019s leading provider of air traffic control services and handles about 2.5m flights per year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Airlines in the UK have demanded urgent action after another air traffic control issue caused widespread delays, including&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631606,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[72,61,60],"class_list":["post-631605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-ie","tag-ireland"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=631605"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631605\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631606"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}