Air travel across parts of Britain faced renewed disruption on Monday after a technical problem at the NATS air traffic control centre in Prestwick, Scotland, caused flight delays and cancellations at several airports.
The incident was the second serious disruption to hit the UK’s air traffic control system in around two weeks, prompting fresh criticism from airlines and renewed questions about the resilience of NATS systems.
NATS said Monday’s incident was caused by a connectivity problem affecting part of its systems network in Scotland and stressed that it was unrelated to the major technical failure earlier in September.
Restrictions imposed for safety
The problem was identified early on Monday morning at the Prestwick control centre.
Temporary air traffic restrictions were introduced for safety reasons to reduce the number of flights controllers were required to manage while technicians worked to resolve the fault.
“To maintain safety, air traffic restrictions were applied to manage demand,” a NATS spokesperson said.
A few hours later, NATS announced that the technical problem had been resolved and said it was working with airports and airlines to gradually lift the restrictions.
It warned, however, that delays would not disappear immediately.
Airports face delays and cancellations
The initial disruption was concentrated primarily in Scotland, northern England and Northern Ireland, with problems reported at Glasgow and Belfast airports.
Flights at London City Airport were also affected, with at least 24 cancellations or significant delays recorded during the early stages of the disruption.
Airports south of Manchester appeared to be less affected.
However, restoring the air traffic control system did not mean an immediate return to normal operations, as aircraft and crews needed to be repositioned following the disruption.
Airlines criticise NATS
The latest incident prompted strong criticism from airlines.
easyJet criticised NATS, arguing that two significant failures within such a short period raised questions about the resilience of the UK air traffic control system.
Ryanair renewed its call for changes to the company’s leadership, while British Airways described the latest disruption as “disappointing”.
Second major incident in two weeks
NATS was already under pressure following a major failure on 8 September, when a software problem resulted in widespread restrictions across UK airspace.
More than 2,000 flights were affected over the two-day period.
A preliminary investigation into that incident found that an error in a small section of software had caused data corruption.
NATS maintained that Monday’s problem at Prestwick was of a different nature and was not connected to the earlier failure.
Passengers were advised to check the status of their flights before travelling to airports, as delays were expected to continue while airlines worked to restore their schedules fully.
