London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
Air India flights were cancelled and delayed on Tuesday after Britain’s air traffic control provider, NATS, suffered a technical failure affecting its flight data processing system.
The UK-wide disruption led to more than 1,000 flight cancellations on Tuesday, with 177 additional flights cancelled for Wednesday.
Heathrow, the busiest hub for India-UK air traffic, was among the airports most affected, alongside Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol.
Air India said the outage had forced it to divert, delay or cancel multiple flights to and from UK airports.
NATS said the system was operating normally again, though clearing the resulting backlog across the network would take time.
NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe said the exact cause of the technical failure was still being investigated, though the system was confirmed to be operating normally again after the fix.
The Civil Aviation Authority was expected to seek a detailed report from NATS on the incident, given the scale of disruption it caused across the network.
Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol airports all reported disrupted flight operations during the outage, with Heathrow the most severely affected.
NATS said recovery from the backlog across the aviation network would take time even after the underlying technical issue was resolved.
This is not the first time a NATS technical failure has caused mass disruption to UK air travel, with similar system outages having grounded flights in the past.
Air India was among several international carriers, alongside UK domestic airlines, affected by the disruption at Heathrow and other British airports.
Passengers travelling to and from the UK were advised to check their flight status directly with airlines given the scale and unpredictability of the disruption.
NATS, formerly known as National Air Traffic Services, is the primary air traffic control provider for UK airspace, handling flight data processing for arrivals and departures across the country’s busiest airports.
London Heathrow Airport Terminal 5, Wikimedia Commons, CC0
