Major British airports faced widespread disruption on Tuesday after a technical fault affected the country’s air traffic control provider NATS.
The failure caused more than 1,000 flight cancellations and delayed hundreds of additional services across several airports.
Consequently, airlines questioned the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure and called for improvements to the national air traffic control system.
NATS said its flight data processing system had experienced the problem but insisted that safety remained unaffected.
The provider later confirmed that engineers had resolved the issue and resumed normal operations.
However, NATS warned that clearing the backlog would take time because the disruption had affected the wider aviation network.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said investigators had not yet determined exactly what caused the technical failure.
Flights delayed and cancelled
According to Flightradar24, around 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were cancelled on Tuesday.
The tracking service also reported 177 cancellations for Wednesday, with most affecting Heathrow, Britain’s busiest airport.
Meanwhile, Heathrow suspended arrivals for the remainder of Tuesday, although departures resumed later.
The airport warned passengers that disruption would continue as airlines worked through the accumulated backlog.
FlightAware reported delays affecting hundreds of departures and arrivals at Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol.
At Heathrow, 38 of 661 scheduled arrivals had been cancelled or could not operate, according to available tracking data.
The disruption has renewed concerns about Britain’s aviation infrastructure, particularly after a major NATS failure caused widespread delays three years ago.
Airlines now face further operational challenges as airports work to restore normal schedules and manage stranded passengers.
