A technical failure at UK air traffic control provider NATS paralysed flights across Great Britain on Tuesday, disrupting operations at Heathrow, Gatwick and other major airports and forcing hundreds of cancellations. British Airways, easyJet and Ryanair were among the carriers hit as departures were first restricted and arrivals later became congested, leaving aircraft and crews out of position across the network.
NATS identified a problem in its flight processing system and moved to restore normal operations after implementing a fix later in the day. Even so, airports warned that recovery would take time as backlogs built up, with Heathrow and Gatwick among the hardest affected and disruption also reported at Stansted, Manchester, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Belfast City, Cardiff, Southampton and Southend.
British Airways cancelled or rerouted more than 100 flights, while easyJet faced multiple cancellations and had some services unable to operate. Live tracking figures showed more than 200 easyJet cancellations at one point, underlining the scale of the knock-on effect across the UK and wider European network.