British air traffic issue disrupts flights for second time in two weeks
The U.K. airspace and airport control towers manager blamed "a connectivity issue with part of our systems network" forcing it to restrict flight movements for safety and to comply with air traffic regulations.
Partner Content
A technical glitch at the Britain's second largest air traffic control center on Scotland's west coast on Monday forced cancelations and delays affecting hundreds of flights and tens of thousands of passengers. (Photo Credit: Andy Rain/EPA-EFE)
Sept. 21 (UPI) -- Technical issues at Britain's second largest air traffic control center on Scotland's west coast Monday forced dozens of flight cancelations and long delays across Scotland, Northern Ireland, northern England and as far south as Gatwick Airport.
At least 140 inbound and outbound flights were impacted with British Airways and Ryanair among the airlines affected. National Air Traffic Services said the fault was resolved by about 10:30 a.m. local time.
Most of the disruption was confined to the northern half of the United Kingdom but Luton, Gatwick and London City airports all reported delays with analysts at aviation firm Cirium warning of a sharp deterioration in operational performance from the knock-on effects as the day wore on.
The U.K. airspace and airport control towers manager blamed "a connectivity issue with part of our systems network" forcing it to restrict flight movements for safety and to comply with air traffic regulations.
"The issue in our Prestwick center is now fixed. We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimize any further disruption. Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologize for the disruption," said a spokesperson for Nats.
Easyjet and British Airways expressed frustration about the impact on their operations coming so soon after another failure of Nats' system on Sept. 8 that hit the country's busiest airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted, sparking travel chaos with more than 2,000 flights canceled and tens of thousands of passengers' journeys delayed.
That incident involved Nats' main air traffic control facility on the south coast of England between Southampton and Portsmouth, about 75 miles southwest of London.
Ryanair called for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to be fired, saying that with 140 of its flights hit by long delays so far on Monday and 25,000 passengers expected to be affected and that something needed to change.
"Just three days after Nats assured airlines and passengers that it had introduced robust 'mitigation plans,' its flight data processing system has failed again. More than 25,000 Ryanair passengers have already suffered disruption, with over 140 Ryanair flights delayed," said Ryanair Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said Monday's disruption was "completely unacceptable."
Report a Typo
