UK air traffic control failure disrupts more than 1,000 flights, airlines call for reform; Air India issues flyer advisory | Today’s news

Flights at major UK airports were disrupted on Tuesday after a technical fault at air traffic control provider NATS affected its flight data processing system, leading to more than 1,000 cancellations and hundreds of delays.

According to Reuters, NATS said the problem had been resolved at 1834 GMT and that “safety was not compromised”. The provider said it was operating normally but warned it would take time to clear the backlog created by the outage.

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe told Sky News the company had “not carried out a full investigation” into the cause of the technical problem.

“We have no idea what exactly went wrong yet,” Rolfe said.

More than 1,000 flights were canceled

Flight-tracking website Flightradar24 said 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were canceled on Tuesday, while a further 177 flights were canceled on Wednesday, almost all at Heathrow.

Heathrow said arrivals were suspended for the rest of Tuesday while departures resumed. The airport warned that the disruption was expected to continue.

FlightAware data showed around 490 departures were delayed at six airports – Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol – as of 1518 GMT. Another 525 arrivals at six airports were either canceled or delayed.

According to aviation analytics company Cirium, 38 of the 661 scheduled arrivals at Heathrow were canceled or unable to operate. The most affected carrier at the airport was British Airways, which canceled 16 of 333 scheduled departures.

“The severity of the issue means it will have a significant impact on customers and colleagues,” British Airways said in a statement.

Read also | UK air traffic control failure: Heathrow, Manchester hit; 300 flights cancelled

Airlines call for NATS reform

The breach has renewed questions about the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure, which comes three years after a flight plan processing failure at NATS caused a widespread disruption.

Aviation analyst John Strickland said delays could spread quickly across Europe’s tightly scheduled air network.

“A few hours of outage may sound limited at first, but the impact is enormous when a significant number of UK airports are affected,” Strickland said, according to Reuters.

Ryanair said around 150,000 of its passengers were affected by delays of up to eight hours and that it had canceled more than 200 flights. The airline’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, has called on NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.

Wizz Air also called for urgent reform, saying that airlines, passengers and airports should not continue to bear the consequences of repeated system failures.

“A provider of critical national infrastructure should not repeatedly shut down the flight system. NATS in its current form is simply not fit for purpose,” Wizz Air said in a statement.

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Air India flights affected

Air India flights operating to and from UK airports were also affected.

The airline said in a traffic warning that it had been forced to divert, delay or cancel several flights to and from UK airports.

Air India also warned that the disruption could affect some of its other services as its planes and crews were left behind after the incident.

The airline advised passengers to check the latest status of their flights before traveling to the airport. Air India said it is monitoring the situation closely and trying to minimize disruption to operations.

“We regret the inconvenience caused by this unfortunate situation, which is completely beyond our control, and thank our passengers for their patience and understanding,” the airline said in a statement on X.

The controller requests a report

The British Civil Aviation Authority said it expected NATS to issue a full report on Tuesday’s incident. The Civil Aviation Authority said it would then consider whether further steps were needed to ensure the reliability of Britain’s air traffic control system.

In 2024, the CAA said NATS needed to review its outage contingency plans after a failure of automatic flight plan processing the previous year caused disruption at UK airports.

In July last year, a radar-related technical problem in Britain’s air traffic control system also disrupted flights for more than four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow.