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Hundreds of flights across the UK were grounded on Tuesday after a software problem threw the country’s air traffic control system into chaos, leaving tens of thousands of passengers stranded.
Flights to and from airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Birmingham were canceled or delayed for up to six hours after the UK’s National Air Traffic Service (Nats) said the problem had been identified “in our flight processing system”.
Nats later said a “fix” had been made and its systems were “beginning to recover,” but flight cancellations and delays caused by the outage had disrupted airline schedules.
British Airways canceled its entire short-haul flight schedule for Tuesday evening and warned of “significant impacts on customers and colleagues”, while easyJet canceled around 100 flights.
With airports filled with late flights, arrivals were suspended at Heathrow and Gatwick, with incoming flights diverted to centers such as Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris and Dusseldorf.
The result is that planes and crews, as well as passengers, are stranded in the wrong cities, causing delays across Europe for travelers that could take days to clear.
The incident increases pressure on Nats, which is funded by airlines and the government and runs Britain’s air traffic control system.
A radar problem at Nats led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights last year, while a glitch in another part of the organization’s software in 2023 caused chaos at Gatwick in the height of summer.
Nuts said on Tuesday night: “Work continues to help airlines and airports recover from today’s disruption. This has been a very complex recovery and has created challenges for the entire aviation network that will take time to recover. We again apologize for the disruption caused.”
Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said she was “seeking assurance that lessons are learned and the systems that support aviation are up to the task.”
Earlier Tuesday, the Nats said they were investigating a “technical issue” in their flight processing system. Hours later, the company said it had “implemented a fix.”
Two aviation industry insiders said the initial fix failed to solve the software problem, meaning engineers had to shut down the system a second time to find a solution.
John Strickland, an aviation analyst, said the disruption would affect “thousands of passengers” and the impact could potentially last for days, especially if long-haul flight crews were affected and planes were stranded.
Industry insiders expressed deep disappointment with Nats. “Things have to get better, we’ve had this happen several times already,” said one airline manager.
One airport executive said the message from Nats was “horrible.”
“There is an information vacuum,” they added. “Making operational decisions is almost impossible if you don’t have information.”
Ryanair, which called for the resignation of Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe after the previous outage, called the latest incident an “abject failure”.
Neil McMahon, the airline’s head of operations, said: “How many more failures will passengers have to endure before Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?”
British Airways said: “This incident was beyond our control and incredibly frustrating for our customers and colleagues as aircraft and crew were stranded.
“We are doing everything we can to keep our customers updated and arrange for them to continue traveling.”
EasyJet said it “will do everything possible to minimize the impact of this on our customers, including providing customers on flights that cannot operate with their options including free transfers or refunds, meals and hotel accommodation.”