UK airports disrupted by air traffic control radar fault
A radar-related technical fault in Britain’s air traffic control system caused significant flight disruptions for more than four hours on Wednesday at major airports across London and other parts of the country. The problem was eventually resolved, and departures began to resume as normal.
NATS, the national air traffic control provider, confirmed in a statement on X that their systems were now fully operational and capacity was returning to normal. They apologized to those affected and said they were working closely with airlines and airports to safely clear the backlog of delayed flights. The outage impacted Heathrow, the UK’s largest airport and Europe’s busiest, as well as Gatwick, Edinburgh, and London City airports. Ryanair, whose flights were delayed and diverted during the disruption, called the incident "utterly unacceptable" and demanded the resignation of NATS CEO Martin Rolfe, criticizing the repeated failures after a similar outage in August 2023. That earlier incident had cost airlines over £100 million in refunds and compensation, and had led to calls for improved contingency planning by Britain’s aviation regulator.
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