Flight disruption after major UK air traffic outage

Air passengers have suffered important disruption after an air visitors management outage introduced main UK airports to a standstill.

The technical downside was reported shortly earlier than 17:00 BST and solely lasted 20 minutes however prompted an enormous backlog of flights and delays.

Hundreds of planes had been grounded at airports together with Heathrow, Stanstead, Manchester and Edinburgh. Greater than 120 flights to and from the UK had been cancelled, as of 19:30.

Air visitors management agency NATS mentioned the difficulty was “radar-related” and rapidly resolved by switching to a back-up system, and it had diminished flight visitors to make sure security.

It added there was no proof the incident was cyber associated.

The federal government mentioned it was “working intently” with NATS to grasp what had gone mistaken.

It’s the second time in two years that NATS has suffered a significant outage.

The previous incident, which occurred on the summer season financial institution vacation weekend in August 2023, affected greater than 700,000 clients.

NATS mentioned the most recent incident noticed it restrict the variety of planes within the London space due to a “technical problem” at its Swanwick air visitors management centre in Hampshire.

It quickly reported engineers had “restored the system that was affected”.

However many planes within the UK had been grounded whereas the system was down, whereas others needed to be diverted to completely different airports.

When departures resumed, NATS mentioned it was “working with affected airways and airports to clear the backlog safely”.

British Airways mentioned it was nonetheless coping with the affect.

“Whereas that is solely outdoors of our management, we need to apologise to our clients for any inconvenience and guarantee them that our groups are working arduous to get their journeys again on monitor as rapidly as potential,” the airline mentioned.

Finances airline EasyJet suggested clients travelling on Wednesday night to test for up-to-date info on its flights, and it mentioned it will contact affected clients immediately.

A Heathrow spokesperson mentioned: “We’re advising passengers to test with their airline earlier than travelling. We apologise for any inconvenience prompted.”

NATS apologised to everybody affected by the difficulty.

Asha, 18, from Manchester, discovered herself “caught” in an EasyJet airplane on the tarmac on the metropolis’s airport at 18:00 on Wednesday.

She mentioned her “first vacation interrailing [has] gone mistaken”

Asha had been on a 15:10 flight to Amsterdam that took off however was solely within the air for 50 minutes earlier than turning round.

Asha mentioned some folks on the flight wished to get off the airplane.

She was “hoping for some free meals” to make up for the disruption.

One delayed passenger mentioned the pilots had been “as annoyed as everybody else”.

Robin Ilott, 62, from Waterlooville in Hampshire, mentioned he’d confronted a two-hour and 20 minute delay at Heathrow.

However he added: “It is higher secure than sorry, you do not need to stand up there and discover that there is planes in all places.”

Liberal Democrat chief Ed Davey known as on the federal government to research the “completely unacceptable” incident.

“With 1000’s of households getting ready to go on a properly earned break, this simply is not ok,” he mentioned.

Ryanair chief working officer Neal McMahon mentioned “one more” air visitors management system failure has “resulted within the closure of UK airspace which means 1000’s of passengers journey plans have been disrupted”.

He mentioned it was “outrageous” that the air visitors management problem has disrupted the plans of 1000’s of passengers, and known as for NATS chief govt Martin Rolfe to resign.

In accordance with flight information agency Cirium, as of 19:30, 67 departures and 55 arrivals had been cancelled throughout all UK airports.

As well as a variety of flights needed to be diverted to different airports, it mentioned.

London Heathrow had the best variety of cancellations, a complete of 24 departures and 14 arrivals thus far.

Cirium doesn’t attribute causes for cancellations, so some might not have been because of the air visitors outage.