UK air traffic control failure disrupts Air India, over 1,000 flights

A technical failure at the UK’s National Air Traffic Services disrupted flight operations across the country on Tuesday, with Air India among the international carriers affected.

More than 1,000 flights were cancelled in the UK on Tuesday, and a further 177 flights set for Wednesday were also called off as the network dealt with the fallout.

Air India confirmed the outage forced it to divert, delay or cancel multiple flights scheduled to and from UK airports, primarily affecting Heathrow.

Other affected airports included Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol, according to NATS.

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the cause of the technical failure was still being investigated, while the Civil Aviation Authority is expected to seek a detailed incident report.

September is a peak month for Indian student travel to the UK, meaning the timing of the outage was particularly disruptive for passengers flying to British universities for the new academic term.

NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the exact cause of the technical failure was still being investigated, though the system was confirmed to be operating normally again after the fix.

The Civil Aviation Authority was expected to seek a detailed report from NATS on the incident, given the scale of disruption it caused across the network.

Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol airports all reported disrupted flight operations during the outage, with Heathrow the most severely affected.

NATS said recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time even after the underlying technical issue was resolved.

This is not the first time a NATS technical failure has caused mass disruption to UK air travel, with similar system outages having grounded flights in the past.

Air India was among several international carriers, alongside UK domestic airlines, affected by the disruption at Heathrow and other British airports.

London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0