British Air Traffic Failure Cancels More Than 1,300 Flights, With Disruption Continuing a Second Day

A technical fault in the flight-processing system of National Air Traffic Services (NATS), Britain's air traffic control provider, restricted traffic for about four hours on Tuesday afternoon and disrupted operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Luton and London City. Roughly 1,300 flights to and from British airports were cancelled, and FlightRadar24 counted a further 177 cancellations for Wednesday, The Hindu reported. The South China Morning Post put Wednesday's total above 150 flights as the service worked to recover.

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers faced delays of up to eight hours and called for the resignation of the NATS chief executive, Martin Rolfe. Wizz Air said the organization was not fit for purpose. Some aircraft that landed after the failure began sat on taxiways for five hours or more because gates were occupied. Al Jazeera reported that hundreds of flights were delayed or cancelled on the first day alone.

Britain has now had two comparable air traffic control failures in roughly a year. The cost of each falls on airlines through European passenger compensation rules, on airports through ground handling overtime, and on travel insurers, while the monopoly provider that caused the disruption bears almost none of it. That asymmetry is why the airlines are demanding structural change rather than an apology.