Passengers at UK airports hit by more delays after ANOTHER air traffic control glitch

TravelTravel News PASSENGERS at UK airports are facing further delays after another air traffic control issue impacted flights. An issue with the National Air Traffic Services [Nats] is affecting airspace in the north of England and in Scotland. Passengers at airports in the north of England, Scotland and Wales are facing delays Credit: Getty Nats said an issue with its Prestwick centre in Scotland sparked the chaos Credit: Getty Holidaymakers are facing lengthy delays after an issue which began at Nats’ Prestwick centre in Scotland. Passengers are being advised to check with their airline for information on their flights. Sign up for the Travel newsletter Thank you! The firm said engineers are working to resolve the issue but that regulations had been imposed to “maintain safety.” Nats has stressed that the issue was unrelated to a massive outage that saw hundreds of flights cancelled just two weeks ago. In a statement on the most recent air traffic control outage, a NATS spokesperson said: “Our engineers are continuing to investigate the issue at our Prestwick centre in Scotland. “Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are currently subject to some delay. “Passengers should check with their airlines. “This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption.” Most read in Travel Holidaymakers at Glasgow airport have reportedly been left waiting on the tarmac for hours amid the delays. Meanwhile, several flights at Manchester Airport have been delayed with passengers warned to expect further disruption. Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected by the issue but flights travelling north may be subject to some delays, Nats said. British Airways and Easyjet have issued messages to passengers hoping to travel today, warning them that some delays are expected. Easyjet said in a statement: “A NATS Air Traffic Control system failure in its Prestwick Centre is causing delays to flights with some unable to operate. “This, once again, calls into question the resilience of NATS’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures. “We will do all we can minimise the impact of this for our customers and advise anyone due to fly today to check our flight tracker for the latest information.” The previous Nats failure affected thousands of passengers with many stuck abroad amid the chaos. Nats announced that a “technical issue” with its “flight processing system” had caused the widespread travel chaos just two weeks ago. A majority of the UK’s biggest airports were brought to a standstill by the failure, which is understood to have been caused by a software error. It led to calls for Nats chief Martin Rolfe to resign with furious airline executives blaming him for the failure. 3 comments3