The company in charge of air traffic control in the UK announced on Monday that it had “identified and remedied” a previous technical problem that had caused aircraft disruptions all throughout the nation.
After issuing warnings that passengers may experience hours-long delays, the National Air Traffic Service said in an afternoon update that it was currently coordinating with airlines and airports to manage the impacted flights.
The technical problem impacting our flight planning system this morning has been located and fixed. In order to manage the impacted flights as effectively as possible, we are now collaborating closely with airlines and airports, according to a statement from NATS released at 3:15 p.m. London time.
As we resume regular operations, “our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance,” it continued. NATS did not elaborate on the root of the problem or whether flight restrictions were still in effect. It comes after earlier statements from the organization that stated that manual air traffic control was being used as a result of a technical issue that prevented the agency from processing flight plans automatically.
In a statement released at 12.10 p.m., NATS stated, “We are currently experiencing a technical issue and have applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety.” Engineers are attempting to identify and correct the problem. NATS stated in an update given at 2:20 PM that the issue persisted and that air traffic control was still being handled manually.
“The technical problem this morning is preventing us from automatically processing flight plans. We are unable to process as many flight plans as we would want to until our engineers find a solution to this, thus we have implemented traffic flow limits,” it stated. After stating that the issue had been fixed, Edinburgh Airport stated that “disruption to flight schedules remain.”
interruption of holiday travel
Following reports on the social networking platform X, previously known as Twitter, NATS initially confirmed the interruption at 12.10 p.m. and stressed that “UK airspace is not closed.” Scottish carrier Loganair first reported the problem with air traffic control, stating on X that there was a “network-wide failure of UK air traffic control computer systems this morning.”
There may be lengthy delays, passengers were cautioned. It coincides with the busy summer travel season in the U.K., when many people are traveling back from vacations. The second-largest airport in London, Gatwick, reported “delays, and [flight] cancellations are likely,” while Luton Airport said that the problem with air traffic control was “affecting UK airspace, resulting in disruption to flights.”
In a statement that went along with it, it was noted that Heathrow and other U.K. airports seemed to be “significantly limiting departures,” even though arrivals were still being made. It also said that all of its frequently monitored aircraft are presently arriving in London.
