Airlines
Air India hit by UK air traffic chaos as 1,000+ flights cancelled
A technical failure at UK air traffic control provider NATS disrupted Air India flights on Tuesday, part of over 1,000 UK flight cancellations affecting Heathrow and other major airports.
Air India was caught up in UK air traffic chaos on Tuesday after a technical failure at NATS disrupted flight operations across the country.
The outage triggered more than 1,000 flight cancellations in the UK on Tuesday, with 177 more flights cancelled for Wednesday.
Heathrow, a key hub for India-UK travel, was among the hardest-hit airports, alongside Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol.
Air India confirmed the technical problem forced it to divert, delay or cancel multiple flights scheduled to and from UK airports.
NATS said its systems were operating normally again, but warned that recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time.
Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol airports all reported disrupted flight operations during the outage, with Heathrow the most severely affected.
NATS said recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time even after the underlying technical issue was resolved.
This is not the first time a NATS technical failure has caused mass disruption to UK air travel, with similar system outages having grounded flights in the past.
Air India was among several international carriers, alongside UK domestic airlines, affected by the disruption at Heathrow and other British airports.
Passengers travelling to and from the UK were advised to check their flight status directly with airlines given the scale and unpredictability of the disruption.
NATS, formerly known as National Air Traffic Services, is the primary air traffic control provider for UK airspace, handling flight data processing for arrivals and departures across the country’s busiest airports.
September is a peak month for Indian student travel to the UK, meaning the timing of the outage was particularly disruptive for passengers flying to British universities for the new academic term.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the exact cause of the technical failure was still being investigated, though the system was confirmed to be operating normally again after the fix.
London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0