UK air traffic control failure grounds hundreds of flights
100s of flights cancelled at UK airports due to ATC issue
A technical issue at UK air traffic control provider Nats caused widespread disruption on Tuesday, leading to hundreds of flight cancellations and delays at airports across the country. Heathrow ran out of space for arriving flights, and at least 22 flights were diverted to other airports. Nats says the fault is resolved but recovery is taking longer than hoped, with a backlog of flights likely to cause disruption for hours. British Airways cancelled or diverted over 100 flights, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.
We are truly sorry for the ongoing flight disruption. We know this is hugely frustrating and apologise unreservedly.
- dtf
NATS - the same system that crashed in August 2023 [1] due to an id clash, causing 2000 flights to be cancelled and days of chaos.
- illwrks
For anyone stranded, read up on UK261/EU261 and your airlines application process to be reimbursed. As far as I’m aware it’s not likely to happen automatically, you need to initiate the process (and record audio/video just in case proof is needed)
- tom1337
Currently stuck at an airport in london. It's insane how little information the staff here has.
Also mindboggling that in aviation, where everything has a backup or two there seems to be a single company with a single software that can take down an entire airspace which most like will create worldwide ripple for the next days.
- Hard_Space
Just had to cancel my 10-year passport renewal appointment for tomorrow morning, since it's in London and I'm in the EU. Man, this was a *miserable* way to spend a day. The flight kept getting bumped, heading for certain cancellation (it came, about midnight, long after I had returned from the airport); GPT was incredibly helpful on how to redeem (most of) the shit-ton of money I had paid for a 4-hour passport renewal appointment, and what my rights and obligations were in this situation.
In particular it pointed me to authority docs declaring that if a flight is 5+ hours late, you can refuse to fly, reclaim the money and exit the airport. So when the next update said that the flight had been bumped 9 hours, I had all I needed to secure that and went home. Two hours later, the app announced the flight was cancelled.
Sometimes (really a lot) I want to kick GPT's/Claude's/Gemini's collective rear ends. And then there are times like these, when, with me in a funk, AI cuts straight through to the essential knowledge I need and lowers the temperature.
- surgical_fire
This affected flights going to the UK as well.
Source: Me, stuck in an airport, having witnessed numerous flights destined to London canceled throughout the day.
- small_model
Wonder if any of this code was outsourced to India 'cut costs'
- doublerabbit
Including mine. I'm not angry because my flight was cancelled. It's a pain in the arse but what really infuriates me is the "We are terribly sorry" these PR releases give. I've been on hold for three hours with British Airlines and it's "we are sorry", no you're not.
"We are truly sorry for the ongoing flight disruption" is what infuriates the situation; when words have no meaning behind the phase. Pixelated hold-music I am sure is designed to make you rage further.
- gausswho
Uh oh. For those of us with a connection through Heathrow morning of the 10th (in about 36 hours) what would you recommend?