A computer problem at National Air Traffic Services (NATS) has caused a major disruption for hundreds of thousands of passengers at Heathrow, Gatwick, and other UK airports, with over 700 flights cancelled or delayed. The incident is under investigation by NATS, which has acknowledged that the issue was caused by a "spurious flight plan" that sent the system into a loop, leading to a shutdown. Neal McMahon from NATS has spoken publicly about the incident, stating that it is a unique problem and emphasizing that safety remained the top priority during the resolution process. The disruption has left many passengers angry and frustrated, with some calling for improved backup systems to prevent such incidents in the future.
Written by the local model on 2026-09-09,
using this article's own text rather than the other coverage of the
same event (that is the story summary below).
Story summary
Here's a summary of the news story:
Thousands of flights were cancelled and delayed at Heathrow, Gatwick, and other UK airports on Tuesday and Wednesday due to a technical issue with the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) system.
- 900 flights were delayed or cancelled at Heathrow and Gatwick on Saturday, causing chaos for travelers.
- A similar issue occurred on Tuesday, when 1,300 flights were axed in total across UK airports, affecting tens of thousands of passengers.
- NATS blamed a "flight processing system" failure, which was resolved on Wednesday, but the backlog of flights continued to cause delays and cancellations.
- British Airways cancelled over 190 flights at Heathrow alone, while Gatwick saw 33 cancellations.
- The issue has sparked calls for NATS CEO Martin Rolfe to resign, with Ryanair's chief operating officer Neal McMahon saying that "nothing has changed" since a similar incident in 2023.
The technical failure is believed to be related to climate change, which is expected to increase turbulence and disruptions in the air travel industry. The UK's air traffic control system is under scrutiny, with many passengers left stranded for hours or even days without compensation.
Written for “UK Air Travel Chaos” on 2026-09-09,
grounded in this article and the 4 other(s) covering the same event.
Why this leaning score
This article does not take a side on a contested political
question, so it has no leaning score. That is an
answer rather than a gap: a match report or a rescue can be warmly
or critically written without being left or right, and scoring it
anyway is how approval of a subject gets recorded as a political
position.
No political leaning scored for article 7329 · logged 2026-09-09
The National Air Traffic Services is urgently carrying out an investigation to identify what went so disastrously wrong, leading to hundreds of flights being cancelled at Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted and other airports.
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hundreds → carry → Heathrow
“Our system issue is now resolved, we are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights.”
The computer problem meant that flights were stopped from taking off from airports.
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flights → resolve → airports
The impact of this situation led to Heathrow and other airports running out of parking places for planes.
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Heathrow → lead → planes
Hundreds of flights were cancelled or delayed.
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Hundreds → cancel → flights
NATS did not go into detail about precisely what caused the problem.
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what → go → problem
In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when NATS suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.
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NATS → experience → plan
“NATS told us it was a flight planning processing failure, which is exactly the same issue that happened in 2023,” Neal McMahon told Times Radio.
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McMahon → tell → Radio
“If you remember in 2023 there was an issue with a flight plan, and it sent the system in a loop that eventually caused it to shut down.
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it → remember → loop
“We’re told that that was a rogue flight plan and we’re told yesterday this was a spurious flight plan which caused the same outage and our question is like: these things can happen, but where’s the backup systems?”
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systems → tell → outage
“My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today,” he told BBC radio on Wednesday.
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he → get → Wednesday
“And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.
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what → turn → incident
“What I will say is I don’t believe we’ve ever seen an incident happen more than once, so this will be something different that we’ve never seen in 50 years of operation.”
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we → say → operation
“Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems,” he added.
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he → go → systems
“We had everybody on site, everybody was in the right place.
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everybody → have → place
We had all the engineers in place.
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We → have → place
We had our various partners from software industries all on hand.
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We → have → hand
“So this was resolved as quickly as it could be, but within the limits of making sure that it all stayed safe.”
uncertain
it → resolve → limits
His words, though, will do little to defuse the anger of many passengers caught up in the travel chaos.
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words → do → chaos
