“U.K. airspace is not closed,” it said but they had to “apply air traffic flow restrictions which ensures we can maintain safety.”
London’s Heathrow airport is one of the busiest international airports in the world, and even small disruptions can cause significant ripple effects in other countries. This is also a hugely busy time of the year — Monday is a public holiday in the country and many people, including families with children, are returning from summer holidays.
Aviation analysts said that air traffic controllers would be reverting to analog systems, manually bringing in planes that were already in British airspace when the technical fault happened. Around 3,000 flights were due to arrive in the country on Monday, and another 3,000 were expected to depart.
Journalists caught up in the issue reported on their own delays. The Washington Post’s Jennifer Hassan on Monday morning boarded an easyJet flight in Inverness, Scotland, destined for London’s Luton airport. But after nearly two hours on the tarmac, passengers were asked to disembark the plane and to expect a 6-7 hour delay.
Sky News producer Georgia Ziebart said that her flight — from Palma, Majorca to London’s Gatwick airport — was told that all planes that were in the air at the time the systems went down have been diverted to other countries.
Air control agencies and airlines were warning passengers of delays to flights.
The European air control agency, Eurocontrol, warned of “very high” delays because the U.K. was experiencing “a flight data processing system failure.”
Ireland’s air traffic controller, AirNav Ireland, said “NATS is currently experiencing a technical issue that is restricting the capacity of UK airspace. This is resulting in significant delays for flights across Europe that are traveling to, from or through UK airspace.”
For its part, British Airways said it was “working closely with NATS to understand the impact of a technical issue that is affecting UK airspace and will keep our customers up to date with the latest information.”
