Over 350 Flights Cancelled In UK After Technical Snag Hits Air Traffic Control System

More than 300 flights have been cancelled in the United Kingdom on Tuesday after a technical issue in the UK air traffic control system, according to data from the flight monitoring website Flightradar24.

Britain’s National Air Traffic Services said engineers were urgently working on the issue, which was affecting departing flights. “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. We apologise for the delay this will cause to journeys, passengers should check with their airline on the status of their flight,” it said.

About 100 flights were cancelled at Heathrow Airport, Britain’s largest airport and Europe’s busiest, while

367 were delayed, according to data on flight-tracking platform FlightAware. Around 250 flights have been delayed at Gatwick, about 31% of the total, the data showed.

NATS later identified the issue in the flight processing system. “We have implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover. We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery,” it said.

We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline. (2/2)

— NATS (@NATS) September 8, 2026

Flightradar24 reported that the problem affected dozens of flights operated by multiple airlines, including British Airways, EasyJet, KLM and Lufthansa.

“The air traffic control service is experiencing a technical issue which is impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports. We are supporting our local NATS team in their efforts to resolve the issue as quickly as possible,” Heathrow Airport posted on X.

The air traffic control service @NATS is experiencing a technical issue which is impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports.

The air traffic control service @NATS is experiencing a technical issue which is impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports.

We are supporting our local NATS team in their efforts to resolve the issue as quickly as possible.

We apologise to those affected by… pic.twitter.com/ji2LyCdL3T

— Heathrow Airport (@HeathrowAirport) September 8, 2026

EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” and that the system failure caused “delays to flights across Europe”. It was not immediately clear what caused the technical problem.

“This is entirely out of our control and we’re in touch with our customers whilst our teams work to get them on their way as quickly as possible,” the British Airways said in a statement.

In 2025, a technical issue temporarily disrupted flights out of the United Kingdom, affecting hundreds of flights. Operations in multiple airports, including Birmingham and Edinburgh, were also affected.

Britain’s aviation regulator said in 2024 that NATS needed to review its contingency plans for outages after the automatic processing of flight plans had malfunctioned a year earlier, causing chaos across Britain’s airports.

(with inputs from agencies)