Add the Gazzetta del Sud as a source
Flight tracking site FlightRadar24 reports that 177 flights scheduled for today in the UK have already been cancelled, following 1,300 cancellations to and from British airports yesterday. Almost all the new cancellations concern London’s Heathrow airport, the busiest in the United Kingdom. The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said last night it was still working to resolve the disruption caused by a “systems issue”.
The nightmare of air transport in the United Kingdom therefore returns promptly. The general alarm was given by the air traffic authority (Nats), which found a problem in its flight plan processing system, thus making large-scale take-offs impossible: in addition to the airports of the British capital, those of Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Manchester, Birmingham, Bristol, Southend, the Isle of Man and Jersey were involved.
The repercussions on international airports were also inevitable, including Dublin, Paris and other cities in the rest of Europe. Nats engineers intervened to resolve “as quickly as possible” the computer system glitch, which for now is not traced back to hypothetical hacker attacks or perhaps to the shadows of Russian hybrid warfare recently relaunched in the Kingdom and the rest of Europe against the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine. The organisation, at the center of strong criticism for similar cases of air traffic blockages, apologized for the inconvenience caused and announced a gradual return to normality with the system which was restarted in the late afternoon while yesterday evening and still today the repercussions linked to the blockade continue to persist.
The UK Civil Aviation Authority has asked for a “full report” on the matter: “We expect the National Air Traffic Control Service (Nats) to produce it and share it with us”. But in the meantime, tens of thousands of passengers have suffered consequences of the failure – more than 65 thousand for the low-cost airline Ryanair alone – in the midst of travel at the end of the summer: among them many Italians. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander said she was aware of the situation and realized how frustrating it could be for those involved.
Many stories collected by the media of those who remained stranded in British airports, waiting to be able to leave. Phil White told the BBC that his flight to Lanzarote was stuck on the Gatwick tarmac for hours. “They told us that the radar is out of order and we can’t take off,” he said, noting that at least the pilot intervened every 20 minutes to update passengers on the situation. The chaos in the skies yesterday also affected the Arsenal team: the flight to Naples, where the Gunners are due to play a Champions League match today, was delayed. Amazement also among the pilots: “I have never seen anything like this at Heathrow in my entire career”, a captain of a flight to New York stranded on the ground told the British media.
The reaction of companies such as Wizz Air and Ryanair is harsh. “A provider of critical national infrastructure should not repeatedly paralyze the aviation system. Nats, in its current form, is absolutely not fit for purpose,” read a statement relaunched by Sky News. There are many precedents of failures due to the technical inefficiencies of the British airport system, which periodically goes haywire. As happened in July last year, again in the midst of a holiday period, when take-offs and landings were temporarily blocked in all major airports. In March 2025, due to the fire in the North Hyde electrical substation in London, a blackout paralyzed Heathrow airport for 18 hours, and hundreds of thousands of passengers were stranded, throwing air traffic into chaos.