Skyfall: UK Air Traffic Control Outage Grounds Flights and Strands Passengers

Air travel in the UK faced significant turmoil after a major air traffic control outage caused widespread flight cancellations and delays. The outage lasted only 20 minutes but left thousands of passengers stranded at major airports including Heathrow, Stansted, Manchester, and Edinburgh. As of 22:00 BST, over 150 flights were cancelled, severely impacting travel plans just before the busy holiday season.

The air traffic control company, NATS, reported that the issue was radar-related and swiftly resolved by switching to a backup system, assuring there was no evidence of a cyberattack. This was a troubling repeat of a similar incident that occurred during the summer bank holiday weekend in August 2023, which adversely affected over 700,000 passengers. This latest outage stemmed from a technical issue at NATS’s Swanwick control centre in Hampshire, prompting the firm to limit the number of planes in the London area until engineers restored the system.

Passengers reported being held in aircraft for extended periods; for instance, Asha, an 18-year-old from Manchester, described being ‘stuck’ on the tarmac for hours on her way to Amsterdam. Others echoed similar frustrations, hoping for compensation after experiencing what has been described as a “rubbish” situation. British Airways and EasyJet issued apologies and encouraged passengers to stay updated on their flight statuses as the backlog began to ease.

The ripples of this incident led to urgent political calls for accountability. Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey demanded government oversight on the ‘utterly unacceptable’ outages. This echoed sentiments from Ryanair’s COO, who criticized the reliability of UK air traffic systems, suggesting resignation for NATS’s CEO. Flight data indicated that approximately 3% of departures and 2% of arrivals were cancelled, with Heathrow recording the highest number of cancellations at 29 departures and 17 arrivals.

As the air traffic situation improves, airports like Birmingham and Manchester appear to have resumed normal schedules, but the lingering impact of this disruption has left many travelers frustrated and awaiting answers.