UK air traffic control glitch resolved: Hundreds of flights delayed, cancelled

Image: Getty Images

The British air space is now open to flights after a technical failure that caused widespread disruption and led the country’s National Air Traffic Service (NATS) to restrict the flow of all UK air traffic, was rectified.

“We have identified and remedied the technical issue affecting our flight planning system this morning. We are now working closely with airlines and airports to manage the flights affected as efficiently as possible,” NATS said in a statement.

“Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations.”

British transport minister Mark Harper said he was working with NATS to help manage affected flights and support passengers.

NATS said the issue was a “flight planning issue” which had affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, “meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions”.

According to a report in the British media, Cirium, an aviation data firm, said 3,049 flights would have been due to depart from UK airports on Monday, and a further 3,054 flights scheduled to arrive.

During the restricted flying hours, 232 departing fights had been cancelled, which it said was equivalent to 8 per cent of all departures, and 271, or 9 per cent, of incoming flights. These numbers do not account for the delay suffered by incoming and outgoing flights that use the British air space.

Thousands of domestic and international flight schedules have been disrupted as the air space above the country came to a complete standstill for three hours on Monday.

UK air traffic suffers knock-on effect

A spokesperson for London Heathrow, the busiest airport in western Europe, said schedules would remain significantly disrupted for the rest of the day.

“We ask passengers to only travel to the airport if their flight is confirmed as still operating.

The technical issue which limited UK air traffic today has been fixed by NATS. Schedules still remain significantly disrupted. Please only travel to the airport if your flight is confirmed to be operating. We are working hard to minimise the impacts and assist those affected.

— Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) August 28, 2023

Teams across Heathrow are working as hard as they can to minimise the knock-on impacts and assist those whose journeys have been affected,” a Heathrow Airport spokesperson said.

British Airways said its flights were severely disrupted and it had made “significant changes” to its schedule. The airline added customers due to travel on Monday and Tuesday may be able to move their flights free of charge to a later date.

pic.twitter.com/cXeotGXmXL

— British Airways (@British_Airways) August 28, 2023

Ryanair said it had been forced to delay or cancel a number of flights, and Jet2 said all its flights to and from the UK were expected to experience significant delays.

Some delays/cancellations likely to/from the UK today, 28 Aug due to UK ATC failure pic.twitter.com/dyAKoQHswq

— Ryanair (@Ryanair) August 28, 2023

It said it had cancelled some outbound flights on Monday and was reviewing Tuesday’s schedule.

The UAE’s national carrier Emirates said in a statement that it has been advised that “a widespread systems failure within UK Air Traffic Control on August 28 has been rectified.”

It said all flights currently flying to the UK will be allowed to land, but flights departing the UK may experience delays. “Emirates continues to monitor the situation and apologises to its customers for the inconvenience,” the airline said.

Other airports in the UK such as London Stansted and London Gatwick had issued advisories to passengers to connect with their respective airlines before travelling to the airports. Dublin Airport said the issue had resulted in significant delays and cancellations to flights into and out of the Irish capital.

Air Traffic Control issues in the UK today are resulting in delays to some flights into and out of Dublin Airport. We advise all passengers due to travel today to check the status of their flight with their airline in advance of travelling. pic.twitter.com/lmDeIxwb7F

— Dublin Airport (@DublinAirport) August 28, 2023

Passengers across Europe’s cities who were meant to fly into the country over the last weekend of summer are now stranded for the forseable future as airlines reschedule flights and crews after the network failure.