Flights at major airports across the United Kingdom were disrupted on Wednesday by a technical glitch that was quickly resolved, according to the air traffic control service.
The number of aircraft in London’s airspace was limited by the service, known as the National Air Traffic Services (NATS), as a result of a technical issue, causing airports including Gatwick and Edinburgh to stop departures.
NATS said in a statement it had “restored” the system and was “resuming normal operations” in London.
“Our systems are fully operational and air traffic capacity is returning to normal,” NATS, the country’s air traffic control provider, said in a post on X.
“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 outage, announced by NATS 20 minutes earlier, included Heathrow Airport, Britain’s largest airport and Europe’s busiest.
“Flights at Heathrow have resumed following a technical issue at the NATS Swanwick air traffic control centre. We are advising passengers to check with their airline before travelling,” an airport spokesperson said.
The issue also affected its Swanwick site in southern England.
In separate statements on X, Edinburgh airport said it was working to “return to normal operations,” while Gatwick said “there are some delays… while operations resume”. Edinburgh Airport also said operations were resuming.
Gatwick said earlier that the issue had affected “all outbound flights across the UK”.
London City Airport had earlier also reported disruption. It was not clear exactly how long the outage had lasted.
In 2023, the NATS suffered the country’s worst systems failure in almost 10 years, stranding thousands of passengers. Flights across Britain were disrupted after the automatic processing of flight plans malfunctioned.
Britain’s aviation regulator last year said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the outage, which airline bosses said cost them over 100 million pounds ($133 million) in refunds and compensation.
