Passengers stranded at Heathrow Airport as UK closes airspace

A major technical breakdown in the air traffic control system in the United Kingdom has resulted in numerous passengers being left stranded or facing extensive delays at airports during the summer bank holiday.

Early on Monday afternoon, approximately 500 flights were cancelled, while others experienced significant delays. This disruption occurred due to a comprehensive computer failure that caused both takeoffs and incoming flights to be suspended, affecting the entire network.

National Air Traffic Services (Nats), the organization responsible for managing the national airspace, announced that they had identified and resolved the fault by 3:15 pm. The issue had begun affecting flights around four hours prior to this announcement.

Passengers were informed that they might encounter delays of eight to twelve hours as engineers worked to pinpoint and fix the problem. While a limited number of flights were able to depart, air traffic was severely restricted, and controllers were compelled to manually input flight plans.

The impact was particularly felt at London Heathrow Airport, the busiest airport in the UK, where flights were significantly delayed from around 11:30 am.

Nats officially confirmed the problem at approximately 12:10 pm, explaining that they were dealing with a technical problem and had imposed traffic flow restrictions to ensure safety.

In an updated statement, Nats stated, “Our engineers will be carefully monitoring the system’s performance as we return to normal operations. The flight planning issue affected the system’s ability to automatically process flight plans, meaning that flight plans had to be processed manually which cannot be done at the same volume, hence the requirement for traffic flow restrictions.”

By 2:30 pm, according to data from analytics firm Cirium, around 232 outbound flights from the UK and 271 inbound flights had been cancelled, constituting just under 10% of all flights. However, it was anticipated that this number would rise as the issue persisted.

Both British Airways and TUI notified passengers of potential delays due to the airspace problem. Loganair, a regional carrier, communicated to its customers that there was a widespread failure in the UK air traffic control computer systems, affecting international flights.

Flights originating from Ireland were also impacted, with many facing delays due to their need to traverse UK airspace.

Beyond vacationers, individuals returning from the World Athletics Championships in Hungary were also affected. Notably, the situation led to emotional stories, including that of BBC presenter Gabby Logan, whose plane was stranded on the runway in Budapest.

Engineers at Nats were under pressure to resolve the issue promptly, as an extended outage could lead to extensive cancellations. In 2014, a computer glitch at the Swanwick control center resulted in flight disruptions that lasted until the following day.

The government’s response to the crisis was met with criticism from both the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties. Transport Secretary Mark Harper and Aviation Minister Charlotte Vere assured the public that efforts were being made to address the situation.

Despite the challenges, the priority remained the safety of UK airspace, with Nats apologizing for the disruption and urging passengers to consult their respective airlines for information on flight impacts.