All outbound flights leaving Britain were grounded this afternoon after an air traffic control ‘technical issue’.
Major airports – including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Edinburgh and Birmingham – were forced to suspend flights with thousands of passengers left stuck on the tarmac.
Earlier this afternoon, a technical issue suffered at the NATS Swanwick air traffic control centre grounded all London flights, sparking travel chaos.
Passengers heading off on their summer holidays took to social media to vent their frustration, with some posting pictures from grounded plane windows or telling the Daily Mail they had been rediverted to Brussels.
By 4.43pm, NATS said the issue was resolved but knock-delays will continue, with passengers advised to check with their airline.
A statement read: ‘Our engineers have now restored the system that was affected this afternoon.
‘We are in the process of resuming normal operations in the London area. We continue to work closely with airline and airport customers to minimise disruption.’
Departures across all airports have now resumed, NATS said, however the backlog of flights is expected to cause delays across the country for the next few hours.
‘Our systems are fully operational and air traffic capacity is returning to normal,’ it added. ‘We are working with affected airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely.’
There are delays for departures at Heathrow until at least 9:15pm, while flights at Gatwick are facing delays to flights as late as 8:40pm.
British Airways said the number of its inbound and outbound flights at Heathrow is restricted to a total of 32 per hour until 7.15pm. After then the flow rate will return to the usual level of 45 per hour.
The airline said the problem ‘was entirely outside of our control’ and is ‘affecting the vast majority of our flights’.
‘We want to apologise to our customers for any inconvenience and assure them that our teams are working hard to get their journeys back on track as quickly as possible,’ it added.
RyanAir’s chief operating officer Neal McMahon called on NATS’ chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign following today’s chaos – which marks the second time in two years the air traffic controller has seen a major outage.
He said: ‘It is outrageous that passengers are once again being hit with delays and disruption due to Martin Rolfe’s continued mismanagement of Nats.
‘Yet another ATC system failure has resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers’ travel plans have been disrupted.
‘It is clear that no lessons have been learnt since the Aug 2023 Nats system outage, and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence.
‘If Nats CEO Martin Rolfe fails to resign on the back of this latest Nats system outage that has disrupted thousands of passengers yet again, then UK transport minister Heidi Alexander must act without delay to remove Martin Rolfe and deliver urgent reform of Nats’ shambolic ATC service, so that airlines and passengers are no longer forced to endure these preventable delays caused by persistent Nats failures.’
One person on X reported a Heathrow bound flight was flying around Ben Nevis while unable to land safely.
Meanwhile, passenger Jane Ainsworth told the Daily Mail her flight from Kos back to Birmingham has been forced to land in Brussels.
Another frustrated flyer reported ‘going nowhere’ as they sat inside an airplane on the runway for more than 40 minutes.
‘Going nowhere as no departures from @HeathrowAirport for the last 40 minutes. Apparently ‘the radar isn’t working’. @British_Airways crew being fab,’ they wrote.
A Heathrow spokesperson said: ‘Flights at Heathrow have resumed following a technical issue at the NATS Swanwick air traffic control centre. We are advising passengers to check with their airline before travelling. We apologise for any inconvenience caused.’
Gatwick Airport said on Wednesday afternoon that technical issues caused a complete halt to departures while the situation was being resolved.
‘A technical issue impacting Nats is affecting all outbound flights across the UK,’ the airport said on X.
‘There are currently no departures from London Gatwick while the situation is being resolved.
‘We are working with Nats to resume flights as quickly as possible. Inbound flights are still landing at the airport.
‘Passengers should check the status of their flights with their airline.’
More than 700,000 passengers suffered disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports on August 28, 2023 when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
With the system down, flights could not take off or land at any airport, causing hellish delays that lasted for days and cost airlines £100 million in compensation.
A Civil Aviation Authority inquiry into the incident found that IT support engineers were allowed to work from home on one of the busiest days of the year.
The engineer assigned to fix the problem struggled to login remotely because the system had crashed, so it would not accept his password.
It took an hour and a half for them to get into their office, where they performed a ‘full system re-start’ – which did not resolve the problem.
While thousands of holidaymakers were stuck at airports or on the tarmac, advice was sought from an off-site senior engineer, who also did not understand why the system had failed so dramatically.