Major Disruptions in Air Traffic Control in the UK Halt Flights

Planes Grounded, Departures Suspended

A 20-minute air traffic control outage caused planes to be grounded and departures to be suspended.Flight disruptions lasted for hours.

After aircraft were rerouted, thousands of passengers were stranded across Europe, and some returned to their departure cities.

Gatwick, London City, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Heathrow, and Manchester airports were affected by the disruption.

Air traffic control provider Nats stated that their systems were fully operational again, air traffic capacity had returned to normal, and departures had resumed at all airports. However, flights had accumulated following the outage.

Passengers said they were stuck on planes even after landing, that some flights turned back mid-air, and that they were confused due to “terrible communication.”

No information was provided about the cause of the problem.

Source: Independent