Flights disrupted across UK as air traffic control reports a ‘technical issue’

The U.K.’s air traffic control provider reported a technical issue Monday which saw flights across the country disrupted.

“We are currently experiencing a technical issue and have applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety,” NATS said in a statement issued at 12.10 p.m. London time. “Engineers are working to find and fix the fault.”

In an update issued at 2.20 p.m., NATS said that the fault remained unresolved and that air traffic control was being handled manually for the time being.

“This morning’s technical issue is affecting our ability to automatically process flight plans. Until our engineers have resolved this, flight plans are being input manually which means we cannot process them at the same volume, hence we have applied traffic flow restrictions,” it said.

NATS clarified that “UK airspace is not closed” following reports on social media site X, formerly known as Twitter.

It did not provide further details on the cause of the issue or what flight restrictions had been put into place.

Passengers have been warned that they could see delays of up to 12 hours. It comes during the U.K.’s busy bank holiday travel period, with many people returning from summer holidays.

Gatwick Airport, London’s second-largest airport, said it was “seeing delays, and [flight] cancellations are likely,” while Luton Airport said the air traffic control issue was “affecting UK airspace, resulting in disruption to flights.”

Meanwhile, Stansted Airport said it was “aware of a nationwide air traffic control issue that is affecting flights in and out of airports across the country.”

Edinburgh Airport said passengers should not come to the airport before checking the status of their flight with their airline.

The issue with air traffic control was announced earlier by Scottish airline Loganair, which said on X that there was a “network-wide failure of UK air traffic control computer systems this morning.”

Flight tracking website Flightradar24 shared an image on X of live air traffic data at 12:35 p.m. London time.

In an accompanying statement, it said that U.K. airports, including Heathrow, appear to be “significantly limiting departures,” although arrivals continue. It added that all of its most tracked flights are currently London arrivals.