Britain’s air traffic control provider NATS has resolved a technical fault in its flight processing system that disrupted flights across the UK on Tuesday, but delays and cancellations are continuing into Wednesday as airlines and airports work through a large backlog. Major hubs including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted were affected, with more than 1,000 flights cancelled and hundreds of thousands of passengers hit by the outage.
NATS identified the problem in its flight data processing system and implemented a fix later on Tuesday evening. The company ruled out a cyberattack and apologised publicly for the disruption. Even after normal operations resumed, carriers still faced the task of repositioning aircraft, crew and slots across the network, prolonging knock-on effects at airports and on domestic and international schedules.
The incident again exposed the vulnerability of the UK’s central air traffic management network. Airlines warned that the recovery would not be immediate, with some departures still being delayed as the system returned to service. The disruption added pressure on NATS after a series of earlier failures had already raised questions over resilience in Britain’s aviation infrastructure.