Low-cost Irish airline Ryanair called for the chief executive of the UK’s air traffic control provider, NATS, to resign after a brief radar outage that caused huge disruption for flights across the country.
Thousands of planes were grounded at the UK’s busiest airports during the peak summer holiday season, including Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester and Edinburgh.
As of Wednesday night, flight data firm Cirium said 84 departures and 71 arrivals had been cancelled across all UK airports, although these were not necessarily related to the outage.
Radar outage
It said a number of additional flights had been diverted to airports in other parts of Europe.
NATS said the outage was “radar-related” and had been quickly resolved by switching to a back-up system, and that it had reduced flight traffic to ensure safety.
It said there was no evidence the failure was related to malicious cyber-activity.
“Our systems are fully operational and air traffic capacity is returning to normal,” NATS said on social media.
“Departures at all airports have resumed and we are working with affected airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely. We apologise to everyone affected by this issue.”
The statement was made 20 minutes after NATS initially announced the disruption. It was not clear exactly how long the outage lasted.
A Heathrow spokesperson said flights were resuming following a technical issue at the NATS Swanwick air traffic control centre, and advised passengers to check with their airline before travelling.
Flight chaos
The BBC described the example of a young woman from Manchester who had boarded a 3:10 pm EasyJet flight to Amsterdam that was in the air for 50 minutes before turning around, and was still on the tarmac at 6 pm.
Another person said he had faced a two-hour and 20 minute delay at Heathrow.
Ryanair chief operating officer Neal McMahon criticised “yet another” air traffic control failure, following an August 2023 incident that also caused major disruption, and “resulted in the closure of UK airspace meaning thousands of passengers travel plans have been disrupted”.
He said the incident was “outrageous” and called for NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign.
“It is clear that no lessons have been learnt since the Aug ’23 NATS system outage and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence,” McMahon said in a statement.
