Update: UK flight disruption extends into second day after NATS outage

Hundreds more flights have been cancelled across UK airports as airlines continue to recover from Tuesday’s air traffic control failure, extending disruption for passengers into a second day.

Aviation analytics firm Cirium said 291 flights had been cancelled by late Wednesday morning, comprising 120 departures and 171 arrivals.

That represented around 5% of the 5,869 flights scheduled for the day, compared with a typical daily cancellation rate of between 1% and 2%, according to the company.

Cirium estimated that around 1,750 flights were cancelled on Tuesday as the NATS technical problem disrupted operations across the UK and affected hundreds of thousands of passengers.

Airlines face operational backlog

British Airways said it had cancelled 198 flights scheduled for Wednesday after 349 of its services were cancelled the previous day.

The airline said aircraft and crews had been left out of position by the disruption and that it had worked overnight to establish a revised schedule.

Although flights have resumed across the UK, several major airports warned that further cancellations and delays were likely while airline networks recover.

Heathrow said operations were recovering but expected knock-on disruption as aircraft and crews were repositioned. Gatwick said flights had restarted but that a full return to normal operations would take time.

Large-scale disruption can leave aircraft at airports where they were not scheduled to be, while flight crew may also be displaced or reach limits on the number of hours they are legally permitted to work.

The disruption could therefore continue for some airlines for several days, particularly on routes with fewer services and limited spare capacity to accommodate stranded passengers.

NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe has apologised for the failure and said the organisation would conduct a full investigation.

A cyberattack has been ruled out as the cause.