Flights at several UK airports faced delays on Monday after a new air traffic control failure UK incident affected systems at NATS’ Prestwick centre in Scotland.
Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast airports reported delays. London Gatwick and London City also warned passengers about disruption. NATS later said the connectivity problem had been fixed and that operations were returning to normal.
New NATS Failure Causes Flight Delays
NATS said the latest problem was unrelated to the major outage earlier this month. That incident involved a software defect in the UK flight data system and caused around 2,000 flight cancellations.
Monday’s issue affected flights heading north and departures from Scottish airports. By 0858 GMT, airlines had reported 24 cancellations.
British Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said the latest problem had been resolved. She also acknowledged passengers’ frustration following the earlier disruption.
Airlines Warn Passengers About Disruption
Ryanair said about 25,000 of its passengers were affected by the latest delays. The airline again called for NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
EasyJet also cancelled some flights and raised concerns about the resilience of NATS systems. British Airways warned passengers that they could face disruption during the day.
The latest incident adds to growing concerns about repeated technical problems affecting Britain’s air traffic network.
NATS Faces Pressure After Repeated Failures
NATS manages UK airspace from its control centres in Prestwick and Swanwick and provides air traffic services to airports across the country. The operator says it handles more than 2.4 million aircraft movements through UK airspace each year.
The earlier September outage prompted an independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority. NATS said that incident resulted from a software defect and that safety was never compromised.
A separate major disruption in 2023 also caused widespread travel problems and significant costs for airlines.
For passengers, the latest air traffic control failure UK incident means further delays and cancellations could continue while airlines work to clear the backlog.
