Flight disruption after main UK air site visitors outage

[ad_1] Rachel Clun, Faarea Masud & Tom Espiner Enterprise reporters, BBC Information

<img sizes="(min-width: 1280px) 50vw, (min-width: 1008px) 66vw, 96vw" srcset="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/240/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 240w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/320/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 320w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 480w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/640/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 640w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/800/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 800w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1024/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 1024w,https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/1536/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp 1536w" src="https://ichef.bbci.co.uk/news/480/cpsprodpb/a85d/live/2e9dbca0-6d86-11f0-98fc-31c75321b3a0.jpg.webp" loading="eager" alt="EPA Passengers queue to check in at Gatwick Airport in Crawley on 30 July 2025" class="sc-d1200759-0 dvfjxj"/> EPA Air passengers have suffered important disruption after an air site visitors management outage introduced main UK airports to a standstill.

The technical downside solely lasted 20 minutes however brought about an enormous backlog of flights and delays.

1000's of planes have been grounded at airports together with Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester and Edinburgh. Greater than 150 flights to and from the UK have been cancelled, as of twenty-two:00 BST.

Air site visitors management agency NATS mentioned the difficulty was "radar-related" and rapidly resolved by switching to a back-up system, and it had diminished flight site visitors to make sure security. It added there was no proof the incident was cyber associated.

The federal government mentioned it was "working intently" with NATS to grasp what had gone fallacious.

It's the second time in two years that NATS has suffered a serious outage.

NATS apologised for the outage.

The previous incident, which occurred on the summer season financial institution vacation weekend in August 2023, affected greater than 700,000 clients.

NATS mentioned the newest incident noticed it restrict the variety of planes within the London space due to a "technical problem" at its Swanwick air site visitors management centre in Hampshire.

It quickly reported engineers had "restored the system that was affected".

However many planes within the UK have been grounded whereas the system was down, whereas others needed to be diverted to totally different airports.

When departures resumed, NATS mentioned it was "working with affected airways and airports to clear the backlog safely".

British Airways mentioned it was nonetheless coping with the affect.

"Whereas that is solely outdoors of our management, we need to apologise to our clients for any inconvenience and guarantee them that our groups are working laborious to get their journeys again on observe as rapidly as doable," the airline mentioned.

Funds airline EasyJet suggested clients travelling on Wednesday night to test for up-to-date data on its flights, and it mentioned it could contact affected clients straight.

A Heathrow spokesperson mentioned: "We're advising passengers to test with their airline earlier than travelling. We apologise for any inconvenience brought about."

Birmingham Airport says its schedules are anticipated to run as regular on Thursday, whereas Manchester additionally doesn't anticipate any additional affect.

Asha, 18, from Manchester, discovered herself "caught" in an EasyJet aircraft on the tarmac on the metropolis's airport at 18:00 on Wednesday.

She mentioned her "first vacation interrailing [has] gone fallacious"

Asha had been on a 15:10 flight to Amsterdam that took off however was solely within the air for 50 minutes earlier than turning round.

Asha mentioned some folks on the flight needed to get off the aircraft.

She was "hoping for some free meals" to make up for the disruption.

One delayed passenger mentioned the pilots have been "as annoyed as everybody else".

Robin Ilott, 62, from Waterlooville in Hampshire, mentioned he'd confronted a two-hour and 20 minute delay at Heathrow.

However he added: "It is higher secure than sorry, you do not need to rise up there and discover that there is planes all over the place."

John Carr, 35, from Stourbridge, is the most effective man at his brother's marriage ceremony in Norway and was on his method there with a bunch of buddies when their flight was cancelled.

"We have got the marriage rehearsal to do. It is fairly worrying," he advised the PA information company.

His good friend James Hedges, additionally from Stourbridge, mentioned there was "no warning" from the airport or the airline earlier than the flight was cancelled, describing the scenario as "garbage".

"There's nothing we will do," he added.

'Outrageous outage'

Liberal Democrat chief Ed Davey known as on the federal government to research the "completely unacceptable" incident.

"With hundreds of households getting ready to go on a effectively earned break, this simply is not ok," he mentioned.

Ryanair chief working officer Neal McMahon mentioned "one more" air site visitors management system failure has "resulted within the closure of UK airspace that means hundreds of passengers journey plans have been disrupted".

He mentioned it was "outrageous" that the air site visitors management problem has disrupted the plans of hundreds of passengers, and known as for NATS chief government Martin Rolfe to resign.

In keeping with flight knowledge agency Cirium, 84 departures and 71 arrivals have been cancelled throughout all UK airports. That equates to three% of all departures and a pair of% of all arrivals.