Chaos in British aviation as around 2,100 flights are cancelled / Nats chief given one week to report on the fault

Martin Rolfe, Nats’ chief executive, has been tasked with submitting within a week a report on the technical fault that caused major disruption to British air traffic and led to the cancellation of nearly 2,100 flights.

The disruption hit major UK airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted, while passengers continued to face delays and cancellations.

According to data from analysts at Cirium, around 2,100 flights were cancelled at UK airports as a result of the fault. On Tuesday, around 1,750 of the 5,800 scheduled flights were cancelled, 541 of them at Heathrow. More than 300 flights were also cancelled on Wednesday because of the incident’s aftermath.

The problem in Nats’ flight-processing system, the company responsible for air traffic control in the UK, emerged at around 13:00 on Tuesday.

Nats said the fault had been located in its flight-processing system, but was not linked to the same problem that caused major disruptions in 2023 and 2025.

The system returned to normal operation around four hours after the incident began. However, the company described the recovery process as complex and warned that the aviation network would need time to recover fully.

Rolfe said a full investigation would be conducted to determine the cause of the fault. “We will conduct a very thorough investigation,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, adding that at this stage the possibility of a cyberattack had been ruled out.

Ryanair reacted sharply to the way the situation was handled, announcing that it had cancelled more than 250 flights and that the cost of the disruption could run into millions.

Michael O’Leary, Ryanair’s chief executive, called for Martin Rolfe to resign or be dismissed. According to him, repeated problems with air traffic control demonstrated a continuing failure of the system.

Yvonne Moynihan, the managing director of Wizz Air UK, also called on Rolfe to consider resigning. She said that after three significant failures, those in charge should be held accountable.

The British travel association Abta called for clarification of the causes of the incident and stressed that the immediate priority should be supporting affected passengers.

British Airways announced that it had been forced to cancel nearly 550 flights, affecting more than 85,000 passengers.

The airline said the fault was entirely beyond its control and apologised for the difficulties caused. However, according to British Airways, around 80% of its normal schedule was completed.

The disruption directly affected the main airports in London and Manchester, where operations were suspended for several hours during the afternoon.

At Heathrow, only departures were initially restricted. However, because of the buildup of aircraft waiting to take off, some arriving flights were forced to divert to other European airports.