Overview
- NATS identified the problem on Tuesday as a fault in its flight processing system, prompting a departure ground stop at Heathrow from about 12:48 p.m. and severe restrictions at Gatwick and other airports.
- The technical failure affected many major UK airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Jersey, and flight tracker data showed around 200 cancellations and large numbers of delays.
- NATS says engineers are on site and departures have begun to resume in a limited way, but the operator and Eurocontrol warn that recovery and clearing the backlog will take hours and could stretch into the evening.
- Passengers experienced planes held on tarmacs, returns to terminals and long waits, with airlines and airports advising travellers to check flight status and citing rights to rerouting, care or refunds where delays or cancellations apply.
- The outage underlines UK airspace reliance on automated processing and follows high‑impact NATS failures in 2023–24 that prompted regulatory scrutiny of contingency plans and resilience.