Anabelle Colaco
10 Sep 2026

LONDON, UK: Hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled at major British airports September 8 after a technical problem with the country's air traffic control system disrupted operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted and other hubs.

Air traffic control provider NATS said the problem had been traced to its flight processing system.

"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 airport, said it was working with NATS to resolve the problem.

Flightradar24 said arrivals and departures were being regulated at airports within the London flight information region because of the issue.

About 100 flights had been canceled at Heathrow and another 367 delayed, according to data from flight-tracking platform FlightAware. At Gatwick, about 250 flights had been delayed, representing roughly 31 percent of the total.

The disruption extended beyond the two major London airports. Edinburgh Airport said the problem could affect its operations, while delays or cancellations were also reported at London's Luton Airport, Birmingham Airport, Aberdeen and Glasgow.

Dublin Airport in Ireland said some arriving and departing flights were also facing delays.

British Airways said its flights were being disrupted because of the air traffic control problem.

"This is entirely out of our control and we're in touch with our customers whilst our teams ⁠work to get them on their way as quickly as possible," the airline said in a statement.

EasyJet said the issue was causing delays across Europe. Ryanair, Wizz Air and Virgin Atlantic were not immediately available for comment.

Tuesday's disruption follows previous technical problems involving Britain's air traffic control system.

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

Airline executives said that incident had cost them more than £100 million ($135.49 million) in refunds and compensation.

Another technical problem occurred in July last year, when a radar-related issue in Britain's air traffic control system disrupted flights for more than four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow.