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UK Broadband

NATS technical fault at Prestwick disrupts flights across Scotland and northern England

Flights across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England were delayed on Monday after a technical issue at NATS's Prestwick control centre, less than a fortnight after a software defect led to more than 2,000 flights being cancelled.

By James Calloway · · Updated · 1 min read

An easyJet aircraft at a gate at Glasgow Airport, with boarding stairs and passengers
Photo: Thomas Nugent / Geograph Britain and Ireland, CC BY-SA 2.0 (Wikimedia Commons) · source

Flights across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England were delayed on Monday after a technical issue at National Air Traffic Services’ (NATS) Prestwick control centre.

NATS said it was investigating the problem and had applied air traffic regulations to manage demand while engineers worked to resolve it. “The issue is unrelated to the technical problems experienced earlier this month,” it said, referring to the 8 September software defect that led to over 2,000 flights being cancelled.

Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Belfast International and Belfast City airports all reported disruption. Highlands and Islands Airports said schedules were affected at all of its airports, including Dundee, Inverness, Islay and Benbecula. Manchester Airports Group said some Manchester flights were running up to an hour late, with no cancellations so far. Edinburgh Airport said it was “experiencing some delays due to the NATS issue at Prestwick Centre”.

NATS said airports south of Manchester were “broadly unaffected”, with delays centred on flights heading north and departures from Scottish airports — although London City airport also reported some disrupted flights.

Airlines reacted furiously. British Airways said it was “yet another technical fault with NATS”, Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy demanded urgent action, and easyJet said the disruption “calls into question the resilience” of NATS’s systems. Ryanair said it had been notified of a NATS “equipment failure” affecting airspace above Scotland and northern England.

The failure is NATS’s third serious IT failure in three years, and comes less than a fortnight after the 8 September disruption that hit an estimated 330,000 passengers.

Sources

More on this topic: all UK Broadband stories

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