According to a flight tracking website, as of the evening of September 8 (local time), a total of 1,055 flights to and from UK airports had been canceled.
The UK National Air Traffic Control (NATS) said that the process of fixing the system incident took longer than expected. The agency confirmed that the incident has now been fixed, and air traffic control operations have returned to normal. Functional forces are urgently resolving the backlog of flights.
NATS also apologized to passengers for the serious inconveniences caused by the incident.
Heathrow, Gatwick, Liverpool, Birmingham and Edinburgh airports are among those affected by the incident. British Airways has been forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights, affecting tens of thousands of passengers. Ireland's low-cost airline Ryanair said that more than 65,000 passengers of the airline were affected and more than 50 flights were canceled.
The incident also affected the schedule of the sports teams. Arsenal had to cancel the press conference before the match against Napoli in the Champions League on September 9 after the team's flight was delayed.
A technical malfunction also caused a series of flights to and from the UK to be canceled, causing a strong reaction from aviation industry leaders in July last year.
Previously, in 2023, the UK's aviation system experienced its most serious incident in many years, affecting more than 700,000 passengers when hundreds of flights were delayed or canceled.
