UK flights disrupted again: What caused the fresh NATS air traffic control failure?

Flights at several airports across the United Kingdom were hit by delays on Monday after a fresh technical problem at the country's air traffic control provider NATS caused restrictions on air traffic.

The disruption came less than two weeks after a separate failure in the UK air traffic control system had caused widespread cancellations and delays.

Nearly 200 flights were delayed, while around a dozen British Airways flights and 50 EasyJet flights were cancelled amid the latest disruption.

Prestwick centre faces connectivity issue

NATS said the problem was detected early Monday morning at its Prestwick centre in Scotland. The issue affected connectivity in part of its systems network.

“To maintain safety, air traffic regulations were applied to manage traffic demand while our engineers investigated,” NATS said, according to the BBC.

The air traffic control provider clarified that Monday's problem was a “connectivity issue” involving part of its systems network and was not connected to the earlier disruption that affected flights across the UK.

Manchester, Glasgow and Belfast were among the airports affected. Glasgow and Aberdeen airports reported delays, while Manchester and Newcastle also experienced disruption.

Bristol and London City airports saw some impact as well, while Belfast City airport warned passengers about possible delays.

NATS says technical issue fixed

NATS later confirmed that engineers had resolved the problem and said it was working with airports and airlines to ease the restrictions.

“We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption,” it said.

UK transport secretary Heidi Alexander also said the issue had been resolved, while warning passengers that some delays could continue as the system returned to normal.

“Fixed the problem and systems are resuming”, Alexander said. “I know this will be deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue,” the transport secretary said. "There may be some delays as things reset. Please check with your airline for updates," Alexander said in a post on X.

Earlier outage affected thousands of flights

The latest disruption follows a major air traffic control failure earlier this month that affected more than 2,000 flights over two days.

Operations at 15 airports, including Heathrow, were disrupted during that incident, affecting passengers travelling on several routes, including services operated by Indian carriers to London.

NATS had attributed that outage to a problem with its flight processing system and later said the original fault had been resolved.