More than 400 flights have been cancelled, with tens of thousands of passengers facing disruption after an air traffic control issue.
Nats, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said in a statement that recovery had “taken longer than we had hoped” after a technical issue in its “flight processing system” which was causing the disruption on Tuesday.
Some 425 flights were cancelled to and from UK airports as of 5pm following the problem, according to flight monitoring website Flightradar24, as airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Edinburgh and Stansted confirmed they had been impacted.
Nats said the “system issue” had been resolved at about 7.30pm.
“We are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” a statement on X said.
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.
Meanwhile, British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.
A spokesperson for company said that despite being informed by Nats that the issue had been resolved, the “severity” of the problem means there will be a “significant knock-on impact for customers and colleagues.”
The incident was “entirely out of our control and incredibly frustrating for our customers and colleagues” the spokesperson added.
Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” following the issue which was causing delays to flights across Europe.
Nats apologised for the disruption to people’s journeys and urged passengers to check with their airlines for updates.
The company said it had “implemented a fix” and its flight system was “starting to recover”.
In a post on X, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said she was “seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job” following the disruption.
She said she gave her “huge thanks” for those working to “get people moving”.
Passengers stranded at Heathrow and Gatwick told the Press Association of their “panic” upon hearing of the delays.
Katherina Wilken and her partner were due to be flying back from Heathrow to Dusseldorf in Germany on Tuesday afternoon.
The 26-year-old said she started to “panic” when at 3pm she had no gate information for her flight which was scheduled for 2.45pm.
The couple are now due to depart Heathrow at around 7am on Wednesday.
She said: “It’s way too stressful to stay in a hotel miles away, we will probably stay here (at the airport) tonight.”
Journalist Julia Pobegailova was due to fly from Gatwick to Tel Aviv at around 1.30pm today, but sat on the runway for three hours before being informed it had been cancelled.
The 29-year-old told PA that Wizz Air’s next flight to Tel Aviv isn’t until Saturday.
“I’m just trying not to panic,” she added.
“I’m trying to figure out what to do and find a solution. There’s always a way, so it’s fine.”
Chi Chen travelled from Bristol to Heathrow airport as he was meant to be flying to Naples to meet a friend and made it all the way through security before discovering his flight was cancelled.
“I was due to be flying out at 6.15pm (on Tuesday),” the 43-year-old told PA.
“They only announced the cancellation at around 3.30pm.
“I was in panic and a lot of people were there.”
Mr Chen and his friend were meant to be spending 10 days in Capri and Tuscany.
He said British Airways emailed him offering an alternative flight at 6.05am on Thursday, which involved flying to Brussels first, but he is unable to accept it.
The worst affected airports are Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, according to Flightradar24, which said approximately 4% of UK flights have been cancelled or delayed as a result.
Jersey Airport in the Channel Islands, London City Airport, London Southend, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Southampton and Belfast airports are also among those who said they were impacted.
Manchester Airport said it expects flight disruption to continue “for the rest of the day”.
Last July, a “radar-related issue” caused an air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the UK, disrupting thousands of passengers and forcing the cancellation of more than 160 flights.
The problem happened at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and affected the vast majority of England and Wales.
At the time, a Government source said the failure lasted around 20 minutes, and the level of disruption was similar to a day with bad weather.
In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
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