More than 600 flights in and out of U.K. cancelled due to air traffic control issue

More than 600 flights in and out of U.K. cancelled due to air traffic control issue

Officials said a technical issue was identified and a fix is underway

More than 600 flights were cancelled on Tuesday due to a technical issue in Britain's air traffic control system that caused disruptions at major airports across the U.K., the flight monitoring website Flightradar24 reported.

Britain's National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said a problem had been identified in its flight processing system and that engineers were urgently working on the issue, which affected flights across the U.K.

The cancellations and delays renewed scrutiny of NATS three years after a flight-plan processing failure caused even more widespread disruption.

By Tuesday afternoon, NATS said the issue affecting its flight ​data processing system had been resolved. It had earlier said that "safety was not compromised."

"Recovery from today’s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped. Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard ​as possible to clear the backlog of flights," NATS said on X.

ℹ️ Technical issue

Recovery from today’s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped . Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights. (1/2) https://t.co/NpFp3PBDo7

At least 625 flights to and from U.K. airports, including London Heathrow, were cancelled, affecting services operated by multiple airlines, such as British Airways, EasyJet, KLM and Lufthansa, according to Flightradar24.

Some passengers took to social media to complain about being stuck on the tarmac for hours before their flights were eventually cancelled. Many expressed frustration about a lack of communication from airlines.

The affected airports included Stansted and City in London, as well as those in Manchester, Birmingham, Gatwick and Scotland. They warned passengers to check the status of their flight with their airline.

Budget airline EasyJet said some of its flights were "unable to operate" and that the system failure caused "delays to flights across Europe."

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been affected by delays of up to eight hours and that it had cancelled more than 50 flights. The airline also called on NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign.

"How many more failures do passengers have to suffer ​before overpaid failure NATS CEO, Martin Rolfe, accepts responsibility for his repeated mismanagement and resigns?" Ryanair Chief Operating Officer Neal McMahon said.

NATS did not immediately respond to a request for comment on McMahon's statement.

Wizz Air ⁠also called for urgent reform of the air traffic controller, saying airlines, passengers and airports should not continue to bear the consequences of recurring ⁠system failures.

"A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its ⁠current ⁠form," Wizz Air said.

Britain's aviation regulator said it would ​expect NATS to share a full report of Tuesday's incident.

Heathrow's website showed that many short-haul flights departing for European destinations had been cancelled or delayed.