London, Sept. 10 – A technical issue at NATS, the UK air traffic control provider, disrupted departing flights at major UK airports on 8 September 2026 after a fault in its flight data processing system. Safety was not compromised during the outage that hit Heathrow Airport, Gatwick Airport, Manchester Airport and Stansted Airport, among others. The NATS technical issue caused widespread flight disruptions, including cancelled flights and delayed departures across the national aviation network. Passengers faced long waits as restrictions limited operations at several busy hubs.
More than 1,300 flights to and from UK airports were cancelled that day according to flight-tracking data, with hundreds more delayed at Heathrow, Gatwick, London City, Luton, Edinburgh and Bristol. Heathrow Airport suspended arrivals for the rest of Tuesday while departures later resumed, though knock-on effects persisted. British Airways cancelled 16 of 333 scheduled departures at the country’s largest airport. Aviation analytics confirmed 38 of 661 Heathrow arrivals were cancelled or unable to operate amid the air traffic control issue.
NATS confirmed the system issue was resolved by late afternoon and that it was operating normally while working to clear the backlog of delayed flights. Recovery from the NATS technical issue took longer than hoped and created difficulties for the entire aviation network. The Civil Aviation Authority said it expected a full report and would consider further steps to improve the reliability of UK air traffic control systems after this latest disruption.
The incident renewed focus on the resilience of Britain’s aviation infrastructure following earlier outages, including a 2023 flight-plan processing failure and a 2025 radar-related technical issue that also hit major UK airports. Tightly scheduled European skies mean even short air traffic control problems produce cascading cancelled flights and delayed departures that affect thousands of travellers. Regulators continue to examine contingency plans so similar NATS technical issues do not repeatedly halt operations at Heathrow Airport and other key sites.