Over 1,000 flights were cancelled across Britain on Tuesday after a technical problem with the country’s air traffic control system led to major disruption. More than 65,000 passengers were reportedly left stranded for hours at airports and onboard aircraft.
The National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which manages air traffic control in the UK, said it had identified a technical problem with its flight-processing system and engineers worked to restore normal operations. Later, the air traffic control operator said the system was operating normally again and that efforts were under way to clear the backlog.
Some travellers faced delays of up to eight hours. Ryanair said over 65,000 passengers had been affected. The airline cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights, as per AP. British Airways said it had been forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe defended the organisation as being “fit for purpose”, while acknowledging the scale of the backlog of aircraft and passengers, according to the BBC. A British Airways spokesperson said the scale of the disruption would have a “significant knock-on impact”, adding that the incident was outside the airline’s control and had left aircraft and crews in the wrong locations. EasyJet also said some of its flights were unable to operate and that the system failure had caused delays across Europe, as per Reuters. Heathrow said that delays would continue as airlines worked through the backlog.
Manchester Airport said it expected to operate a full schedule on Wednesday, although it added that the airport could be busier than usual as cancelled and delayed flights were rescheduled.
