Heathrow and Gatwick LIVE: Hundreds more London flights cancelled today as passengers face ‘horrible’ knock-on from NATS collapseLatest updates as delays and cancellations continue to hit London airports
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Tom Place, News Reporter|Matt Watts, News Editor|Megan Howe, News Reporter|Michael Howie, Senior News Editor|Nicholas Cecil, Chief Reporter @nicholascecil1 hour ago
Hundreds more flights at London airports are cancelled on Wednesday, a day after an air traffic control systems collapse sparked travel chaos.
At 6.30am, more than 200 flights were showing as cancelled at Heathrow, with a smaller number at Gatwick also impacted.
Many more flights are also delayed, as airlines and airports face the nightmare fall-out from a system failure at National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which provides air traffic control services across the country, leading to the cancellation of 1,300 flights to and from UK airports.
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.
NATS said the issue was with its “flight processing system”.
Its chief executive officer, Martin Rolfe, who apologised for the chaos, is facing a grilling from Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on what went wrong.
Travel journalist Simon Calder said the knock-on effects on Wednesday were “going to be horrible”.
He told Sky News: “There are going to be dozens of cancellations in the morning of flights coming into Heathrow because, basically, the flights didn’t go out (last night).”
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Knock-on effects ‘going to be horrible’
Travel journalist Simon Calder said the knock-on effects from the disruption were “going to be horrible”.
He told Sky News: “There are going to be dozens of cancellations in the morning of flights coming into Heathrow because, basically, the flights didn’t go out tonight.”
Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights, while British Airways (BA) said it was forced to cancel or divert more than 100 flights on Tuesday which had impacted “tens of thousands of customers”.
Travellers sleep on the floor at Gatwick Airport following the major air traffic control technical failureGetty
Martin Brundle stuck for nine hours on a plane
Former racing driver and TV broadcaster Martin Brundle has posted about his ordeal after being stuck on a plane for nine hours amid the flight disruption.
Mr Brundle wrote: “Nine hours and counting sitting on a plane which has travelled nowhere. At a remote parking bay, no food throughout, and mother/baby and a person with a medical condition desperate to get off. As is everyone else.
“Toilets no longer available as blocked. No sign of steps or buses. And that’s before the wait for luggage. Pathetic and dangerous lack of corporate contingency and responsibility.”
Wizz Air and Ryanair call for overhaul
European budget carriers Wizz Air and Ryanair called on Tuesday for an overhaul of Britain’s air traffic control provider NATS following a new technical issue that disrupted hundreds of flights at key airports in the country.
“A critical national infrastructure provider should not repeatedly bring the aviation system to a standstill. NATS is simply not fit for purpose in its current form,” a spokesperson for Wizz Air said.
Wizz Air have said that NATS is ‘not fit for purpose’
Ryanair also criticised the agency and called for the resignation of its CEO, Martin Rolfe.
“Following the 2023 collapse, we were told lessons would be learned. We were told ‘resilience would improve’. We were told the systems had been fixed. Yet here we are again,” Ryanair Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon said.
Passengers ‘sleeping in boxes’ at Terminal 5
Passengers slept overnight “in boxes” at Heathrow’s Terminal 5, according to reports.
They were queuing from the terminal entrance on Wednesday morning, and #hundreds of people were crowded around the check-in desks.
Times Radio reported that people were “strewn over the floor” trying to get some sleep, with “some of them in boxes”.
Delayed passengers wait with their luggage at Heathrow airportAFP/Getty
No flights over London
A screenshot from FlightRadar posted on Reddit yesterday afternoon showed the moment that there were zero planes in the sky over London due to the disruption.
There were no flights over London at one point on TuesdayFlightRadar
NATS CEO ‘accepts full responsibility’
Transport secretary Heidi Alexander has summoned the NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to a meeting this morning for an explanation of the air traffic control disruption which led to the cancellation of hundreds of flights.
Ms Alexander will speak with Mr Rolfe before she addresses MPs in the Commons for the second reading of the Civil Aviation Bill.
Mr Rolfe told Sky News that he “always accept(s) full responsibility” when asked if he was considering his position after the incident.
He added: “I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that.
“What I absolutely take responsibility for is keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can on a day like today.
“You will understand my focus is entirely about how we actually resolve this issue, get things back to normal, help our airlines, our airport customers and the travelling public.”
Hotels run out of rooms near Heathrow
Hundreds of travellers around London have been left stranded following the flight disruption.
One person took to X to write: “ Stuck at Heathrow airport because there’s not a single hotel in the vicinity of London available”.
Delayed passengers wait and queue with their luggage at Terminal 3 of London Heathrow airportAFP/Getty
What caused the disruption and how long will it last?
As of yet, we don’t know the exact cause of the fault that has led to the disruption, other than it being a technical issue in NATS’ systems.
It is also unclear how long it will take for flights to fully resume and for the backlog to be fully cleared.
But disruption is expected to last for much of today at least.
FlightRadar confirms number of cancelled flights
FlightRadar posted on X at around 2.25am that 1,300 UK flights were cancelled on Tuesday, with a further 177 flights already cancelled today.
That number has already massively increased – we will bring you all the latest here.
The situation at Heathrow
As of 6.30am, The Standard counted at least 200 flight already cancelled at Heathrow today, with roughly an even split between arrivals and departures.
A spokesperson for the airport said: “Following yesterday’s technical issue affecting NATS air traffic control, Heathrow’s operations are recovering.
“Flights are operating today, however some knock-on disruption is expected as airlines reposition aircraft and crew.
“Passengers are advised to check the latest status of their flight directly with their airline and to only travel to Heathrow if their flight is confirmed as operating today.
“We apologise to passengers affected by the disruption. Additional colleagues are available across our terminals to provide support, and we are working closely with NATS and our airline partners to return operations to normal as quickly as possible.”
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