Air traffic control issue disrupts departing flights at major UK airports

• A technical issue in NATS' flight processing system disrupted departing flights at major UK airports like Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted on Sept 8.
• NATS engineers are working urgently to fix the problem, but full recovery will take time; flights continue with heavy regulation.
• This incident follows previous air traffic control failures in 2024 and 2025, which caused significant delays and financial losses for airlines.

LONDON – Some departing flights at major British airports were disrupted on Sept 8 after air traffic control provider NATS experienced a technical issue, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted among the airports affected by restrictions and delays.

“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,” NATS said in a statement.

“Flights are still departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time.”

Heathrow, Britain’s biggest hub, said it was working with NATS to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Edinburgh Airport said in a post on X that the issue might impact its operations. Ireland’s Dublin airport said flights leaving and arriving from there were also being affected.

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 said on social media that arrivals and departures were being heavily regulated at airports in the London flight information region because of the issue.

This is the latest problem to hit the country’s air traffic control systems.

In 2024, Britain’s aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the automatic processing of flight plans had malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos across Britain’s airports.

Airline bosses said it had cost them over £100 million (S$171.3 million) in refunds and compensation.

In July 2025, a radar-related technical issue in Britain’s air traffic control system disrupted flights for over four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow. REUTERS