Outbound flights from UK airports have been affected by a technical outage with the UK’s Air Traffic Control provider, NATS (National Air Traffic Services).
Although NATS says the outage at Swanwick ATC Centre has now been rectified, there are still significant delays at airports around the UK as the airlines try to get schedules back on track.
A spokesperson for NATS said: “Our engineers have now restored the system that was affected this afternoon,” adding, “We are in the process of resuming normal operations in the London area. We continue to work closely with airline and airport customers to minimise disruption.
“We apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.”
Some flights were lining up to take off when the outage hit, leaving passengers stranded on aircraft away from the terminal with crew unable to say when they would be able to take off.
The delays are likely to cause disruption over the next day or so, with passengers due to fly later today advised to check on the status of their flight with their airline.