Overview
- A technical fault in NATS’s flight‑processing system on Tuesday caused hundreds to more than a thousand cancellations and widespread delays across major airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham.
- NATS implemented a fix and says core services are now operating normally, but airlines warn recovery will take days as aircraft and crews are repositioned and schedules are reworked.
- Flight trackers and carriers report tens of thousands of passengers affected, with data showing around 1,000 cancellations early on and some airlines, notably Ryanair and British Airways, reporting large numbers of disrupted customers.
- The Civil Aviation Authority has opened or signalled an independent review and Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander is seeking assurances, while several airline executives have publicly called for NATS leadership accountability.
- The fault was in the flight‑processing system that handles flight plans and departures, which explains why the initial outage cascaded into a network‑wide backlog and why the CAA may treat the disruption as ‘extraordinary circumstances’ for passenger compensation rules.