Flights across parts of the UK were disrupted on Monday after a technical issue affected air traffic control systems operated by National Air Traffic Services (Nats). The problem led to restrictions being placed on airspace in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with delays reported at several airports.
The incident came less than two weeks after a separate Nats failure caused around 2,000 flight cancellations across the country. Airlines and industry groups have since raised concerns about the reliability of the UK’s air traffic control infrastructure, while Nats said the latest fault was unrelated to the previous incident.
Technical Issue at Prestwick Centre Affects Flights Across Northern UK
According to Nats, engineers investigated a technical issue at its Prestwick centre in Scotland on Monday morning. The organisation said the problem was a “connectivity issue with part of our systems network” and was specific to its Scottish operation. It added that the issue was not linked to the software problem that caused disruption earlier in the month.
To manage traffic safely while the investigation took place, air traffic regulations were applied to control demand. Nats later confirmed that the issue had been fixed and said it was working with airports and airlines to remove restrictions as quickly as possible.
The disruption affected airports including Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Belfast International and Belfast City. Glasgow Airport operator AGS Airports said some arrivals and departures were delayed, with further disruption expected because of the wider impact across the network.
Several airports advised passengers to check with their airlines before travelling. Manchester Airport reported delays, while London City, London Luton and Gatwick also reported some disruption despite being outside the main area affected by the restrictions. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said engineers had fixed the problem and that systems were resuming, but warned passengers there could still be delays while operations returned to normal.
Airlines Question Resilience After Second Disruption in Weeks
The latest outage prompted renewed criticism from airlines, which said repeated technical problems were affecting passengers and operations. According to Airlines UK chief executive Tim Alderslade, the UK’s air traffic control system is critical infrastructure and must be able to maintain reliable services.
According to GB News, Ryanair said more than 25,000 of its passengers had been affected by the disruption and that more than 140 of its flights had been delayed. The airline’s chief operations officer Neal McMahon criticised Nats’ response and called on chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
EasyJet said the incident raised further questions about the resilience of Nats’ systems. The airline said it would work to reduce the impact on customers and advised passengers to check their flight information before travelling.
British Airways said some customers were likely to experience disruption following what it described as another technical fault involving Nats. Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy also called for action after the latest incident, saying passengers and airlines had faced too many disruptions.
According to Nats, technology failures can occur, but the organisation’s responsibility is to minimise disruption while ensuring safety remains the priority. The company said no safety issues were caused by the incident.
The previous Nats outage earlier in September was linked to a software defect in its flight processing system. That disruption affected thousands of flights and led to an independent review being announced into the circumstances surrounding the failure.
