A fresh failure in the UK's air traffic control network caused delays and cancellations at several airports on Monday, raising renewed concerns about the reliability of the country's aviation
infrastructure just days after a separate technical problem disrupted thousands of flights.
The latest incident was linked to an issue at the Prestwick air traffic control centre in Scotland, according to NATS, the UK's air navigation services provider. Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast airports reported delays, while passengers travelling through London Gatwick and London City were also warned to expect disruption.
NATS said the problem was different from the failure earlier this month that resulted in the cancellation of around 2,000 flights across the country. Monday's incident was described as a connectivity problem affecting operations at the Prestwick centre. By 0858 GMT, 24 flights had been cancelled.
Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said the technical problem had been resolved and that air traffic control systems were returning to normal. She acknowledged the frustration caused to passengers, particularly following the disruption experienced only recently.
Airlines said the impact was significant. Ryanair estimated that about 25,000 of its passengers were affected by delays and again called for NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to resign. EasyJet cancelled a number of flights, while British Airways warned passengers that they could face disruption during the day.
The UK's Civil Aviation Authority said passengers would probably not qualify for compensation where delays or cancellations were directly caused by the air traffic control incident. It nevertheless said airlines should provide appropriate assistance and care to affected travellers.
NATS stressed that the latest failure was unrelated to the earlier outage, which was traced to a software defect and affected hundreds of thousands of passengers. The operator said airports south of Manchester were largely unaffected, while flights travelling north and departures from Scottish airports were experiencing delays.
The recurrence of technical problems has intensified scrutiny of the resilience of the UK's air traffic control infrastructure. EasyJet said the latest disruption highlighted vulnerabilities in NATS' systems and renewed the need for measures to prevent similar incidents from happening again.
The aviation sector has experienced major disruptions from air traffic control failures before. An outage in August 2023 caused widespread travel chaos and was estimated to have cost airlines around £100 million.
The latest episode therefore comes at a particularly sensitive time for Britain's aviation system, with airlines and passengers facing another round of disruption less than two weeks after the previous nationwide failure. Photo by Emirates EK27 from Glasgow , Scotland, Wikimedia commons.
