Hundreds of departing flights from major UK airports were disrupted on Tuesday after air traffic control provider NATS experienced a technical issue, affecting operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
NATS said the problem was traced to its flight processing system and that engineers were working urgently to restore normal operations. It said flights were still departing and UK airspace remained open, but warned that recovery would take time, Reuters reported.
Heathrow, the UK's biggest airport, said it was working with NATS to resolve the issue. Flight-tracking platform Flightradar24 said arrivals and departures were being regulated at airports in the London flight information region because of the disruption.
Around 100 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow and 367 delayed, according to FlightAware data. Gatwick had around 250 delayed flights, accounting for about 31% of its total operations.
Edinburgh Airport warned that the issue could affect its operations, while Dublin Airport said some arriving and departing flights were facing delays.
Other airports reporting delays or cancellations included London Luton, Birmingham, Aberdeen and Glasgow.
British Airways said its flights were being disrupted by the issue, adding that the situation was beyond its control and that teams were working with affected passengers.
EasyJet also said the technical problem was causing delays across Europe. Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic did not immediately comment.
The disruption follows previous incidents involving Britain's air traffic control system. In 2024, the UK's aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after a flight-plan processing failure caused widespread disruption the previous year.
Airline bosses said previous disruption had cost them more than £100 million in refunds and compensation.
In July last year, a radar-related technical issue in Britain's air traffic control system disrupted flights for more than four hours at major London airports, including Heathrow.
