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A technical fault at the UK's air traffic control provider, NATS, disrupted departures at Heathrow, Gatwick and other major airports on Tuesday, September 8. The failure struck the flight processing system in the early afternoon and left tens of thousands of passengers waiting in terminals.
NATS said its engineers traced the problem to the flight processing system and worked on site to restore normal service. The provider posted updates at 1:46 p.m., 3:25 p.m. and 4:40 p.m., confirming that a fix was in place by the late afternoon. Airspace stayed open throughout, but the recovery took several hours.
The knock-on effects were heavy. Flight-tracking data cited by Al Jazeera showed about 490 delayed departures and roughly 525 cancelled or delayed arrivals across six airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol. Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers faced delays of up to eight hours, and the airline cancelled more than 50 flights.
The disruption spread well beyond London. Edinburgh Airport warned that the fault could affect its operations, and delays rippled across the network as the afternoon wore on. Passengers were told to check with their airlines before setting out.
Airlines reacted sharply. Ryanair and Wizz Air called for the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe and urged the government to step in. Ryanair's chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said NATS had "once again failed UK travellers" and the airlines trying to move them. The Civil Aviation Authority said it expects a full report and will consider whether reforms are needed.
The outage came three years after a 2023 flight-plan processing failure at NATS that grounded thousands of flights. Reuters reported that Tuesday's fault created a fresh backlog, with further cancellations likely as carriers repositioned aircraft and crews. NATS handles more than 2.5 million flights and 300 million passengers a year over the UK and the North Atlantic, which leaves little slack when its systems stall.
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