NATS Technical Fault Disrupted Flights at Heathrow, Gatwick, and Manchester, Canceling More Than 1,000

A technical fault at UK air traffic control provider NATS disrupted flights at major British airports on Tuesday, with the cancellation of more than 1,000 flights and delays to hundreds more, renewing questions about the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure.

“The cancellation of more than 1,000 flights and delays to hundreds more renew scrutiny of NATS”

Reuters

Reuters said NATS reported that the issue, which had impacted its flight data processing system, had been resolved at 1834 GMT and that it was operating normally while working to clear the backlog.

ABC News & Headlines – Australian Broadcasting Corporation

The disruption spread across airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Manchester, and the UK’s Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs she believed the outage could have been avoided.

Sky News said the error seemed to occur in the flight-processing system of NATS, which runs air traffic management at 15 airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Glasgow and Manchester, and it reported that more than 2,100 flights were affected across two days.S

Airlines UK said more than 330,000 passengers were impacted by the failure in total, while the CAA warned compensation claims would be difficult because the outage is the result of "extraordinary circumstances".

As cancellations continued, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander told MPs she did not believe the air traffic control problems were “unavoidable” and said she had spoken to NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe, who informed her the outage was due to a technical issue at NATS’s Swanwick site.

The Guardian reported that Downing Street said the government still had confidence in Martin Rolfe, even as airlines including Ryanair and Wizz called for Rolfe to resign or be sacked by Alexander.

Al Jazeera Centre for Studies

Ryanair’s chief operation officer Neal McMahon said: "Martin Rolfe should be sacked.... to prevent repeated collapses of UK air traffic control."

The Independent reported that Ryanair demanded Nats boss Martin Rolfe resign and quoted Alexander telling MPs: “We often take for granted the way in which our aviation system just works, but yesterday [Tuesday] that was not the case.”

Reuters also reported that Rolfe told Sky News that NATS had not "fully done the investigation" to find the reason behind the technical issue that caused the disruption.S

NATS said the fix it implemented on Tuesday, almost four hours after the incident first occurred, had been a “very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network,” and it warned that residual disruption would continue.

“a “very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network"”

The Guardian

By Wednesday lunchtime, Cirium data cited by The Guardian showed more than 300 flights were cancelled in continuing fallout, and it reported nearly 2,100 flights in and out of UK airports had been cancelled because of the failure, including 1,750 on Tuesday out of 5,800 scheduled flights.

The Independent said economic experts told it the meltdown could cost the aviation industry up to £70m, citing Cebr estimates that Tuesday’s flight cancellations were expected to cost airlines around £58 million and that the cost across the two days could reach around £70 million.

Sky News said the CAA warned compensation claims would be difficult due to “extraordinary circumstances,” while Reuters reported that NATS said it was working to clear the backlog of flights.S

For passengers and airlines, the disruption also drove operational knock-on effects, with British Airways saying the fault forced it to cancel almost 550 flights and impact more than 85,000 passengers, and Reuters reported Heathrow arrivals were suspended for the remainder of Tuesday.