{"id":125774,"date":"2026-09-21T13:50:00","date_gmt":"2026-09-21T12:50:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/?p=125774"},"modified":"2026-09-21T13:45:52","modified_gmt":"2026-09-21T12:45:52","slug":"passengers-face-hours-of-delay-restrictions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/passengers-face-hours-of-delay-restrictions\/","title":{"rendered":"Passengers Face Hours of Delay as Airspace Restrictions Spread Across UK Airports"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>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 (<strong>Nats<\/strong>). The problem led to restrictions being placed on airspace in northern England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, with delays reported at several airports.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The incident came less than two weeks after a separate Nats failure caused around <strong>2,000 flight cancellations<\/strong> across the country. Airlines and industry groups have since raised concerns about the reliability of the UK\u2019s air traffic control infrastructure, while Nats said the latest fault was unrelated to the previous incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Technical Issue at Prestwick Centre Affects Flights Across Northern UK<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Nats, engineers investigated a<strong> technical issue <\/strong>at its Prestwick centre in Scotland on Monday morning. The organisation said the problem was a \u201c<em>connectivity issue with part of our systems network<\/em>\u201d 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.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <strong>restrictions <\/strong>as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>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 <strong>further disruption<\/strong> expected because of the wider impact across the network.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Several airports advised <a href=\"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/flights-cancelled-major-airport-disruption\/\" data-type=\"post\" data-id=\"125289\">passengers <\/a>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 <strong>fixed the problem<\/strong> and that systems were resuming, but warned passengers there could still be delays while operations returned to normal.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-rich is-provider-x wp-block-embed-x\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\"><p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">&#39;It could be that your plane is currently sitting on the ground in Glasgow or in Edinburgh and as a result of that there is going to be a long delay.&#39;<br><br>Travel expert Simon Calder reacts to flight delays and cancellations across the UK.<br><br>\ud83d\udcfa Freeview 236, Sky 512, Virgin 604 <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/yhwnAkGqNg\">pic.twitter.com\/yhwnAkGqNg<\/a><\/p>&mdash; GB News (@GBNEWS) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/GBNEWS\/status\/2101983487049777288?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">September 21, 2026<\/a><\/blockquote><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.x.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Airlines Question Resilience After Second Disruption in Weeks<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The latest outage prompted renewed criticism from airlines, which said repeated technical problems were affecting passengers and operations. According to Airlines UK chief executive <strong>Tim Alderslade<\/strong>, the UK\u2019s air traffic control system is critical infrastructure and must be able to maintain reliable services.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gbnews.com\/news\/uk-flights-delays-airspace-restricted\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">GB News<\/a>, 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\u2019s chief operations officer Neal McMahon criticised Nats\u2019 response and called on chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>EasyJet said the incident raised further questions about the resilience of Nats\u2019 systems. The airline said it would work to reduce the impact on customers and advised passengers to check their flight information before travelling.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>British Airways said some customers were likely to experience disruption following what it described as another technical fault involving Nats. Jet2 chief executive <strong>Steve Heapy <\/strong>also called for action after the latest incident, saying passengers and airlines had faced too many disruptions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>According to Nats, technology failures can occur, but the organisation\u2019s responsibility is to minimise disruption while ensuring safety remains the priority. The company said no safety issues were caused by the incident.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The previous Nats outage earlier in September was linked to a<strong> software defect<\/strong> 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hundreds of flights have been delayed after a technical issue affected UK air traffic control systems. Several airports reported disruption as engineers worked to restore normal operations. The incident comes shortly after another major outage caused widespread travel problems.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":125778,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-125774","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-33","no-featured-image-padding"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125774","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=125774"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125774\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":125777,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/125774\/revisions\/125777"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/125778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=125774"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=125774"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/en.econostrum.info\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=125774"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}