London: Thousands of passengers were stuck on the tarmac all over the UK and abroad on Monday after planes leaving and flying to Britain were grounded following a “technical issue” that hit British air traffic control systems, officials said.
The UK’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said it had “applied traffic flow restrictions to maintain safety” across its airports. They did not provide any further information about what caused it or how long it would take to fix.
The disruption comes on one of the busiest travel days of the year – with many people returning from holidays on the last Bank Holiday weekend of the summer.
NATS said a technical issue was affecting its “ability to automatically process flight plans” and they were working to solve the issue “as quickly as possible”.
“Until our engineers have resolved this, flight plans are being input manually which means we cannot process them at the same volume, hence we have applied traffic flow restrictions. Our technical experts are looking at all possible solutions to rectify this as quickly as possible,” it said.
“Our priority is ensuring every flight in the UK remains safe and doing everything we can to minimise the impact,” it added. “We are sincerely sorry for the disruption this is causing.”
The NATS describes itself as the country’s leading provider of air traffic control services, which handles 2.5 million flights and 250 million passengers in a “normal year”.
Earlier, it said engineers are working to find (the technical issue) and fix the fault. “We are continuing to work hard to resolve the technical issue. To clarify, UK airspace is not closed, we have had to apply air traffic flow restrictions which ensures we can maintain safety,” it later updated.
British Airways said it was working with NATS to “understand the impact” of the issue, and said it will keep customers updated. Other airlines are also asking customers to check for updates.
Scottish airline Loganair was the first to report a “network-wide failure of UK air traffic control systems this morning”.
Several airports across the UK, and airlines including Ryanair, EasyJet, Wizz Air, Loganair and Aer Lingus have all warned passengers of delays or cancellations to flights, BBC reported.
Spokespersons for London Luton, Stansted, Heathrow and Gatwick airports all said they were experiencing issues, and urged customers to contact their airlines, it added.
Liverpool John Lennon Airport said “some flights might be subject to a delay”, while Edinburgh Airport urged passengers to check with their airline before going to the airport.
Irish minister of state for transport Jack Chambers warned of a “major” knock-on impact on flights to and from Ireland as a consequence of the issues in the UK.
