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Dublin Airport warns of possible knock-on effects following dozens of cancellations
Cancelled flights are pictured on an electronic check-in display board at Terminal 3 of London Heathrow airport, west of London. Photograph: Henry Nicholls/AFP via Getty Images)At least 177 flights scheduled for Wednesday to and from UK airports had been cancelled, plane tracking site Flightradar24 said, “nearly all at London Heathrow”.
More than 1,000 were cancelled by about 8pm on Tuesday. The airport said it is “expecting close to a full schedule of flights” to operate to and from the airport on Wednesday.
Publican says he can’t pay cleaner after losing nearly €200,000 in four months running barHowever, it warned of the “potential for some disruption” due to the knock-on effects and said all “passengers should continue to check directly with their airline for latest updates on the status of their flight”. The “technical issue” at the air traffic control services provider Nats caused Britain’s third major stoppage in just over three years.
The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted. With air traffic control issues in the UK having been resolved, we are expecting close to a full schedule of flights to operate to/from Dublin Airport on Wednesday. By the time Nats said it had fixed its flight processing system almost four hours later, most flights scheduled to depart were yet to take off.
The disruption spread to include incoming flights to much of southern England. Cancellations and delays continued through Tuesday evening, and British Airways said disruption would affect operations into Wednesday at least, with passengers offered free rebooking until Friday. Nats provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports. Ryanair said more than 65,000 passengers had been delayed and 50 flights cancelled.
The knock-on effects hit flights across Europe, according to EasyJet. Some inbound flights had to be held at airports abroad, said Eurocontrol, the European airspace co-ordinator. London airports, as well as Manchester and Birmingham, were among the most directly affected. Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted.
Heathrow said late on Tuesday that departures had resumed with disruptions but arrivals had been suspended for the rest of the night. Nats initially announced at 1.46pm that it was “investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures”. It later identified the problem in its flight processing system, and announced at 4.40pm that it was fixed.
A spokesperson said the fault was not the same as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025.
“We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery. We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline. ” The chief executive of Nats, Martin Rolfe, was scheduled to brief the UK transport secretary, Heidi Alexander, on Wednesday over the breakdown.
The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry. Ryanair repeated its demand for Rolfe to resign. The airline’s chief operating officer, Neal McMahon, said: “Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for Nats’ abhorrent failure.
” He said the British government should “stop making excuses for repeated Nats failures and appoint a new leader capable of running the UK ATC system”. Additional reporting: PADispute over failed Irish Rail IT project could end up in court‘Everything was bled out’: Publican says he can’t pay cleaner after losing nearly €200,000Aer Lingus pilot reports sighting of large drone close to Dublin Bay
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