Fresh disruption to the UK’s skies has triggered a new backlash from airlines, after an air traffic control problem sparked delays across parts of the country and held up more than 140 Ryanair flights.
National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said flights were being delayed in Northern Ireland, Scotland and northern England because of an air traffic control issue.
The organisation stressed that the latest incident was not linked to the software fault at NATS on 8 September, when more than 2,000 flights were cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers were affected.
Airports including Belfast, Edinburgh and Manchester reported delayed services and advised travellers to check directly with their airlines for updates.
Luton Airport also said domestic routes had been impacted.
NATS said the disruption stemmed from a “connectivity issue” at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, adding that the problem had since been fixed.
The latest delays come after airlines — including Ryanair — previously demanded the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe following the earlier wave of flight chaos.
Flights out of Edinburgh were affected
Ryanair said it expected more than 25,000 passengers to face disruption, with more than 140 of its flights delayed.
Ryanair chief operations officer Neal McMahon said: “Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.
“Enough is enough.
“Martin Rolfe should resign today.”
EasyJet said the renewed disruption “calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems”, while Jet2 said both customers and airlines need “action, accountability and proper resilience”.
“This, once again, calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures,” easyJet said.
“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.”
Passengers were hit with delays and cancellations following the latest issues
Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy said: “This morning’s 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.
“There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.
“What customers and airlines need now is action, accountability and proper resilience, and we need it urgently.”
Tim Alderslade, chief executive of industry body Airlines UK, said passengers and airlines “deserve better”.
He said: “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” and urged that “that these failures stop happening”.
British Airways said it was “disappointing” that some customers could face disruption after “yet another technical fault with NATS”.
NATS said airports south of Manchester had been “broadly unaffected” on the day, but warned that flights travelling north and departures from Scottish airports were seeing delays.
“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption,” it added.
NATS said that airports south of Manchester, pictured, had been ‘broadly unaffected’
UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said on X that engineers had “fixed the problem and systems are resuming”, though she cautioned that delays could persist while operations reset.
A NATS spokesperson said: “The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed.
“We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.
“Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologise for the disruption.”
An initial NATS report into the 8 September disruption said the cancellations were triggered by a software defect, not by “any incorrect actions”.
The report said the fault occurred in “the space of a millisecond”.
Last July, a “radar-related issue” led to an air traffic control failure that disrupted thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation of more than 160 flights.
In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers were disrupted after flights were grounded at UK airports when NATS suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
NATS is the UK’s leading provider of air traffic control services and handles about 2.5m flights per year.
