More than 1,000 flights canceled at UK airports following technical failure

More than 1,000 flights were canceled at UK airports following a technical failure at a Britain’s air traffic control service center, according to reports on Tuesday.

The National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said in a statement that technical issues were causing disruptions in flight departures at UK airports including major London airports.

“We are investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures,” NATS said in the statement. It later determined that the issue was in “our flight processing system.”

A view of a screen showing cancelled flights as passengers wait inside and around London Heathrow Airport following widespread flight delays and cancellations caused by a technical failure in National Air Traffic Services’ (NATS) flight processing system in London, United Kingdom, on September 08, 2026. [Raşid Necati Aslım – Anadolu Agency]

Flight-tracking site FlightRadar24 said that as of 8 pm local time (1900GMT) more than 1,000 flights were cancelled due to the technical failure including inbound flights to London, Manchester, Birmingham airports.

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The Telegraph reported that equipment at the headquarters of NATS at Swanwick, near Southampton, had failed.

Meanwhile, Arsenal was among affected by the failure as the English Premier League team’s travel to Naples for their first Champions League match of the season against SSC Napoli was delayed.

Sky News reported that the team stayed on the training ground for longer and will arrive behind schedule after 9pm local time (2000GMT).

In a video statement, Ryanair’s Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon called out NATS CEO Martin Rolfe’s “incompetence with yet another UK ATC System Failure.”

NATS later issued another update and said recovery from the system issue had taken “longer than we had hoped.”

“Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” it added.

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