Technical failure grounds all flights across UK, leaving thousands stranded
More than 1000 flights to and from UK airports have been cancelled due to what the country’s air traffic control service called a technical issue, in the latest glitch to spark travel chaos.
A total of 1055 flights to and from British airports had been axed, according to the aircraft tracking website FlightRadar24.
Authorities said hundreds of additional flights were delayed and airlines expected the disruption to last for days because aircraft, crew and passengers were now in the wrong place.
Airports, including London City, Manchester, Stansted, East Midlands, Birmingham and Belfast City are also experiencing disruption.
The Telegraph understands that equipment at the headquarters of Nats, the air traffic control company, at Swanwick, near Southampton, has failed.
A Nats statement on X said: “We have implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover.
“We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery.”
Controllers based at the HQ are responsible for safely guiding flights across all UK airspace.
The “data processing” failure happened just after 1pm, multiple sources said, meaning that flights had been disrupted across the country for six hours.
Nats acknowledged a “technical issue” had occurred but said it was not caused by a cyber attack.
Passengers reported chaotic scenes at airports across the country, with large crowds wanting more information about the delays, and some travellers stuck on planes out on the tarmac, grounded before they could take off.
The failure did not just affect people trying to leave the UK for holidays and work. Many Britons trying to return home have been stranded at European airports.
One passenger contacted the Telegraph to reveal that customers were “sitting like cattle” aboard a delayed Jet2 flight from Glasgow to Gran Canaria.
The passenger said: “We’ve been stuck an hour ... They loaded us on the plane early for take-off and we’ve been sat onboard ever since.”
Many passengers have complained of the lack of information provided about the technical failure and its knock-on effects for arrivals and departures.
Australian couple Connor Sherlock and Alisha Stevens said they found out about their flight delays not from EasyJet, their airline, but via a notification from Uber.
The couple are due to get married next week and said they were “nervous” about the delays.
Sherlock, 26, said: “It’s a bit worrying we haven’t received much of an update. We got a notification from Uber but surely EasyJet would tell us, there’s nothing from the airport.”
The issues follow a technical glitch in July last year in which scores of flights to and from the UK were cancelled and which prompted anger from airline chiefs.
The country had its worst air systems failure in almost a decade in 2023, with hundreds of flights delayed or cancelled and more than 700,000 passengers impacted.
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