A technical fault at UK air traffic control provider Nats grounded flights across Britain's biggest airports on Tuesday, with at least 600 flights cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers affected. It is the third large-scale Nats stoppage in just over three years, and airlines are renewing calls for an overhaul of the system.
Nats' flight processing system failed at about 1pm on Tuesday, grounding departures at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham. By late afternoon, at least 600 flights in and out of the UK had been cancelled, and the disruption had spread to incoming flights across much of southern England.
Nats says fix implemented, but recovery slow
Nats first confirmed a technical issue at 1.46pm, then said it had identified and implemented a fix almost four hours later, at 4.40pm. A spokesperson said the system was only starting to recover, and that the fault differed from the ones behind previous outages in 2023 and 2025. According to Nats: "We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery."
British Airways said the disruption would continue through Wednesday at least, offering passengers free rebooking until Friday. The airline said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday afternoon, inconveniencing tens of thousands of customers.
Ryanair and easyJet report thousands of delays
Ryanair said more than 65,000 passengers were delayed and 50 flights cancelled. EasyJet said the knock-on effects hit flights across Europe. Eurocontrol said some inbound flights were held at airports abroad, with disruption likely to continue into the evening.
Flight monitoring website FlightRadar24 reported that by 5pm, easyJet had 137 flights cancelled, British Airways 111, KLM 26, Eurowings 22 and Ryanair 21. Airports across the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted, in addition to all London airports.
Airlines renew calls to overhaul Nats
This is the third incident ascribed to Nats' systems in as many years, and airlines are pressing for change. Ryanair repeated its call for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign, with the airline's chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, saying families and visitors to the UK had once again paid the price for the failure. Wizz Air said Nats is not fit for purpose in its current form.
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she was seeking assurances that lessons would be learned and that aviation systems are up to the job.
Source: The Guardian
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