UK air traffic control technical failure causes flight cancellations and delays across Europe

Flight processing failure disrupts departures

A technical malfunction in the flight processing system of National Air Traffic Services (NATS) disrupted departures across the United Kingdom on Tuesday, 8 September 2026. The national air navigation service provider confirmed that specialist engineers were investigating the fault at its control centres while British airspace remained fully open. Flight tracking service Flightradar24 reported that arrivals and departures were heavily regulated throughout the London flight information region, restricting flight throughput across the network. NATS stated that aircraft were still departing under reduced capacity while teams worked on the flight processing infrastructure.

We have identified that the issue was in our flight processing system. Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible.

Airport operations across Britain and Ireland

The system failure caused widespread delays and ground holds at busy hubs, including London Heathrow, London Gatwick, London Stansted, Manchester and Birmingham. Ground operations at Heathrow were temporarily halted at 12:48 local time before resuming with reduced capacity, with airport management coordinating directly with NATS. Regional operators also faced schedule revisions, including AGS Airports, which manages terminals in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Southampton. In Scotland, Edinburgh Airport warned that operations faced schedule impacts, while additional delays were recorded at Bristol, East Midlands, London City, Southend and the Isle of Man. Transport links to the Channel Islands experienced significant arrival delays, prompting Jersey Airport to alert travelers. In Ireland, Dublin Airport confirmed that flights arriving from and departing to British destinations were delayed. Eurocontrol estimated that normal air traffic capacity across UK airspace would resume around 21:00 BST.

Airline cancellations and passenger assistance

Airlines operating routes across the British Isles revised their afternoon schedules and cancelled selected services. EasyJet confirmed that several European flights were unable to depart due to the air traffic control failure, offering affected travelers free flight transfers, ticket refunds, hotel accommodations and meal vouchers. Swiss International Air Lines announced that 6 of its 22 scheduled flights connected to London area airports had been cancelled by Tuesday afternoon. Nicole Meier, media spokesperson for Swiss, explained that customer support teams were operating around the clock to assist passengers facing travel disruptions across Heathrow, Gatwick and London City.

Since the system problem affects the entire greater London area, flights to and from Gatwick and London City that are still planned for today may also be affected. In total, as of now, this involves 22 individual flights. Of these, 6 individual flights have been cancelled so far.

History of air traffic control outages

The incident is the third notable technical failure to affect British air traffic control infrastructure within four years. In 2024, the Civil Aviation Authority instructed NATS to overhaul its contingency plans after an automated flight-planning system failure in 2023 caused widespread travel disruption and cost airlines more than £100 million ($135.49 million) in passenger refunds and compensation. In July 2025, a separate radar-related technical issue disrupted flight schedules across London airports, including Heathrow, for more than four hours. On Tuesday, airport authorities across the country advised departing passengers to check with their airlines for updated flight status information before traveling to airport terminals.