Traffic & Transport
‘Baggage reclaim was pandemonium’: passengers hit by airport IT chaos recount their ordeals | Airline industry
More than 2,000 flights have been cancelled after an air traffic control system failure that has thrown airports across the UK into chaos. Nats, the air traffic control provider, fixed the problem within hours on Tuesday, but hundreds of thousands of passengers were hit by further delays and cancellations on Wednesday.
Martin Rolfe, the chief executive of Nats, has been given a week to report back on the reasons for the technical failure.
People affected by the disruption talked about their frustration during the two days of chaos – from hours spent stuck on planes waiting to take off, to spending the night sleeping on the floor of Heathrow airport. Here are some of their experiences:
‘People were sleeping on every spare inch of flooring’
Daniel Garrick, 32, a software engineer, was scheduled to leave Heathrow on a flight to Austin, Texas, on Tuesday. After waiting for seven hours on the asphalt, “we were released from the plane only to find Heathrow in absolute chaos”, he says.
“My baggage was lost, and British Airways employees were nowhere to be found. People were sleeping on every spare inch of flooring, in arrivals and at security.”
Baggage reclaim was “pandemonium”, he says. “All the screens just said it was closed. You couldn’t tell where your baggage was supposed to be.
“I found some other Texans going back to Austin on our flight. Someone had an air tag in their luggage and we figured out that the bags were still on the plane. Eventually, there was some announcement where we were told they were not going to finish getting all the bags off the planes tonight, so we’re just going to have to leave.” At the time of writing, Garrick still hadn’t retrieved his case with a week’s worth of clothes.
Garrick’s airline, British Airways, sent a mass email apology at about 9pm on Tuesday. “Then in the app, it automatically rebooked me for a flight tomorrow [Thursday] morning, 48 hours after my first flight. Luckily I’m staying with a friend of a friend in Surrey. It was over £100 just for the Uber here.”
‘We were left to our own devices’
Melanie Thompson, 71, an interdisciplinary artist, was on a 14-hour flight returning from her performance at a mixed media festival with her son in Tokyo on Tuesday when she was told the flight would not land in London. “We were exhausted. About 40 minutes before we arrived, the pilot very politely said, ‘because of IT problems and disruptions at Heathrow, we are going to have to divert to Edinburgh’.
“There was a big silence. About 20 minutes later, he said, ‘we were hoping we could refuel and then take you on to Heathrow. But we can’t do that, so we would like you to stay in Edinburgh tonight’. Then we were left to our own devices to find travel and accommodation for the night.”
“We suddenly found ourselves in Edinburgh with nowhere to stay because all the hotels and Airbnbs had been filled up,” she said.
“We finally found a flat for £500, paid for the taxi to get there and stayed the night there last night.”
Thompson spoke to the Guardian on her train journey from Edinburgh to London as there were no flights available on Wednesday.
‘It’s Kafkaesque’
Thomas Reilly, 55, was due to fly with BA from Marrakech to Gatwick on Tuesdayand then on to Marseille, where he lives and works as a freelance geopolitical adviser. It was only when he got to the airport that he was told his flight was cancelled.
“I am currently stuck in Morocco,” says Reilly. “I did not receive any information from BA about the disruption before getting to the airport.”
He says that, once at the airport, BA staff were helpful and courteous but he has been left with no option but to book a hotel to stay an extra two nights in Marrakech – at his own expense (BA staff at the airport did tell him he could ‘pay and reclaim’ for his hotel expenses).
He has been trying to rearrange his journey, attempting to cancel with BA and fly directly to Marrakech through a different airline.
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He says: “BA’s customer services operator is not taking calls as ‘the lines are too busy’. There is no email address. And their chatbot cannot help. It is Kafkaesque.”
Reilly says he has worked out “alternative travel arrangements, namely to fly direct from Marrakech to Marseille on Thursday 10 September” but he wanted to get his “refund agreed first before outlaying more money on the replacement flight.”
When Reilly got through to someone at BA, he says the airline told him they “would not refund the Heathrow-Marseille ticket”. “It’s absurd,” Reilly adds.
A spokesperson for British Airways said: “Since yesterday, we’ve rebooked more than 60,000 customers to travel on alternative flights, getting them to their destinations as quickly as we can. Today, we’ve been able to operate almost 80% of our schedule across our whole network.
“We know this has been a very challenging and frustrating time for our customers, and we’re incredibly sorry for the experience they’ve endured because of an issue that has been entirely out of our control.”
‘We have also lost two days of our trip’
Keith Sessions, 74, a computer engineer from Cobham, Surrey, and his wife were due to fly from Heathrow to Tahiti via LA on Tuesday with a five-hour stopover at LAX airport.
For the first leg of their journey, they were to fly Virgin, but once on the plane it was clear there were problems.
He says the pilot informed them there were delays. Five-and-a-half hours later, with the plane still on the asphalt, the pilot announced that the flight had been cancelled.
Sessions says they were not offered a meal in that time, “only water, soft drinks and courtesy snacks”.
The couple decided to return home via taxi and their flights were auto-rebooked. They will now fly out on Thursday with an 11-hour stopover at LAX airport. They will arrive in Tahiti at 5.30am on Friday.
“The 11-hour stopover is not ideal,” says Sessions. “We have also lost two days of our trip and had to spend an extra £340 when you factor in extra cabs to and from the airport and the cost to reserve seating on our flight. Communication from Virgin has been very poor, diabolical.”
A Virgin Atlantic spokesperson said: “We’d like to sincerely apologise to our customers for the widespread disruption … We know how frustrating delays and changes to travel plans can be and appreciate our customers’ patience.”
Traffic & Transport
Tell us: how have you been affected by UK air traffic disruption? | Air transport
Airports across the UK including Manchester, Birmingham and all those in London were hit by a system issue at air traffic control on Tuesday, which continued into Wednesday.
We would like to hear from people travelling about how they have been affected by disruption. What has the experience been like? Have you had to change or cancel your travel plans?
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Traffic & Transport
Nats boss summoned by UK transport secretary as flight chaos enters second day | Air transport
The boss of the air traffic control provider Nats has been summoned to meet the UK transport secretary as the number of flight cancellations passed 1,900 in a second day of disruption for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Martin Rolfe, who is facing increasing pressure to resign over a third major stoppage to flights in just over three years, is due to brief Heidi Alexander on Wednesday.
Rolfe ruled out a cyber-attack as a cause for the “technical issue” at air traffic control and defended the resiliency of the systems run by Nats, which provides services to 15 UK airports.
“We will be doing a very thorough and full investigation,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme. “We have at this point ruled out a cyber-attack.
“I don’t believe we have ever seen an incident happen more than once. This will be something we haven’t seen in more than 50 years of operation. I would say the UK has one of the best reputations in the world both from a safety perspective and resilience perspective.”
Nats said the problem occurred in its flight processing system but was not the same fault as those that caused outages and mass disruption in 2023 and 2025.
However, Yvonne Moynihan, the managing director of Wizz Air UK, called on Rolfe to consider resigning over the repeated technical failures at Nats.
“In any industry when you’ve had three failures you need to consider three strikes and you’re out,” she told Today.
“A third time and a third excuse is not enough any more. What we need to see from leadership is accountability. There are serious questions about the resilience of the system. I think Nats and the leadership need to look deep inside themselves.”
On Tuesday, Nats said that the fix had been a “very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network, from which it will take time to recover”.
According to FlightRadar, 246 flights had been cancelled at Heathrow by 6am on Wednesday, while Gatwick passengers faced 33 cancellations.
In a statement on social media on Wednesday morning, Heathrow said: “Following yesterday’s Nats technical issue, flights are operating today, but some disruption may continue as airlines reposition aircraft and crew.
“Please check your flight status with your airline before travelling to the airport and only travel if your flight is confirmed to be operating.”
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In a statement on X, Gatwick also said flights had resumed but the disruption was likely to continue.
Ryanair has said more than 65,000 passengers had been delayed and 50 flights cancelled, with the knock-on effects affecting flights across Europe. Europe’s biggest low-cost carrier repeated its demand for Rolfe to resign.
The airline’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said: “Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for Nats’ abhorrent failure.”
He said the government should “stop making excuses for repeated Nats failures and appoint a new leader capable of running the UK ATC system”.
The breakdown started at about 1pm on Tuesday and affected departing flights at many of Britain’s biggest airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Stansted.
London airports, as well as Manchester and Birmingham, were among the most directly affected. Flights to and from other airports around the UK, including Edinburgh and Belfast, were also disrupted.
The air traffic control problems follow an “isolated event” a year ago that caused widespread disruption, and appeared less severe than the full grounding of flights in August 2023, which prompted a parliamentary inquiry.
Traffic & Transport
Air traffic control issue causes flight delays and disruption across UK | Airline industry
Flights around the UK are facing delays and disruption due to an air traffic control issue which has affected a string of airports including Heathrow and Gatwick and is expected to take “some time” to resolve.
Departures from London airports are most severely affected, with few take-offs since a fault was reported early on Tuesday afternoon.
Most flights due to depart Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and London City airports since 2pm appeared to have been delayed or are yet to take off. Flights from other airports around the UK, including Manchester, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Belfast airports, have also been affected.”
The air traffic control service Nats said at 1.46pm that it was “investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures”.
Nats later added that it had identified the problem, which was in its flight processing system. It said: “Our engineers are on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible. We recognise the ongoing disruption to travel, for which we sincerely apologise.
It continued: “Flights are still departing and airspace is open, but recovery will take some time. We will provide further updates as soon as possible.”
The UK’s biggest airport, Heathrow, said planes were continuing to arrive, although Eurocontrol said some inbound flights were being held at airports abroad, with disruption likely to continue until the evening.
In a statement, Heathrow added: “We are supporting our local Nats team in their efforts to resolve the issue as quickly as possible. We will provide updated information when we have it.
“We apologise to those disrupted and advise passengers to check with their airline for latest flight information.”
Heathrow’s website showed several flights due to depart this afternoon have been cancelled. British Airways said it was experiencing some disruption and was in touch with its customers.
Belfast City airport warned of “some disruption” to flights after the technical issue affecting Nats.
“Due to the technical issue referenced below, there may be some disruption to flights due to arrive in and depart from Belfast City airport,” they said in a statement.”
A Birmingham airport spokesperson apologised to customers and advised them to “arrive at Birmingham airport (BHX) in line with their airline’s check-in requirements and to contact their airline directly for the latest flight information and updates.”
Edinburgh airport said it was aware of the issue which “may impact operations”.
‘Baggage reclaim was pandemonium’: passengers hit by airport IT chaos recount their ordeals | Airline industry
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