Air traffic failure grounds nearly 2,000 flights

But NATS rules out cyberattack

Plane landing on the airport at the sunset time

Around 250,000 people have been affected by what is being called a "technical glitch" in the UK's air traffic control system.

Martin Rolfe, CEO of NATS, told Radio 4's Today programme that the air traffic control provider had specifically ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the disruption.

"Inevitably things to go wrong in complex systems. We never want them to, we hope they don't, but we absolutely plan for them," he said.

Rolfe did not elaborate on what, exactly, went wrong – NATS itself says there was an error in the flight processing system – but the effects have been obvious.

More than 1,750 flights were cancelled on Tuesday and a further 153 on Wednesday so far, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.

Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham were the worst affected airports. Delayed departures meant Heathrow actually ran out of room for arriving planes, with 13 diverted to other sites in the UK and Europe.

Operations at other airports, including Belfast, have also been affected. The majority of flights have now resumed, but some effects are expected to continue.

Both Ryanair and Wizz Air have called for an overhaul of NATS in the wake of the incident, with the latter in particular saying it is "not fit for purpose."

Wizz Air MD Yvonne Moynihan told the BBC Rolfe should consider his job in the light of this and other recent disruptions.

"I think in any position where you've had three failures you need to consider three strikes and you're out," she said.

Those three strikes include the latest incident, as well as a computer shutdown over the August bank holiday weekend in 2023, and a smaller outage in 2025.

In response, Rolfe has said there will be "lots of time for [considering his position] later," but that the immediate focus should be on solving the current issue.

Despite NATS' systems being back up and running, travellers are advised to continue checking with their airlines as delays are expected to continue for several days.