Air traffic control issue disrupts departing flights at major UK airports

LONDON, Sept 8 (Reuters) - Departing flights at several major British airports were disrupted on Tuesday after NATS, the country's air traffic control provider, encountered a technical problem. Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted were among the airports where restrictions and delays were imposed.

In a message posted on X, NATS stated: "We are investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures. Our engineers are on site and we will provide an update as soon as we can."

Heathrow, Britain's largest hub airport, said it was collaborating with NATS to resolve the problem as quickly as possible.

Edinburgh Airport said in a post on X that the issue might affect its operations, while Dublin Airport in Ireland also reported that flights there were being impacted.

Flight tracking service Flightradar24 said on social media that arrivals and departures were being heavily regulated at airports in the London flight information region because of the issue.

This incident represents the latest problem to hit the country's air traffic control systems.

In 2024, Britain's aviation regulator said NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after an automatic flight plan processing malfunction a year earlier caused widespread disruption across British airports.

Airline executives said that episode had cost them more than £100 million ($135.49 million) in refunds and compensation.

In July last year, a radar-related technical issue in Britain's air traffic control system caused flights to be disrupted for more than four hours at major airports in London and elsewhere, including Heathrow.