London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Air India flights disrupted as UK’s air traffic system breaks down
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 flights were disrupted on Tuesday when the United Kingdom’s air traffic control system broke down due to a technical failure at NATS.
The breakdown resulted in more than 1,000 flight cancellations across the UK on Tuesday, plus 177 further cancellations set for Wednesday.
Heathrow was the worst affected airport, given its role as the primary gateway for India-UK air traffic, with Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol also disrupted.
Air India said the outage forced it to divert, delay or cancel multiple flights scheduled to and from UK airports.
NATS confirmed its systems were functioning normally again, though clearing the backlog created by the outage would take additional time.
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