UK flights delayed as air traffic control issue hits again

Flights were delayed across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England on Monday, September 21, after National Air Traffic Services (NATS) reported a connectivity issue at its Prestwick centre in Scotland, the second disruption to hit UK air traffic control in two weeks. NATS said the problem had been fixed by around 11am local time and that its system was running at full capacity, though airports warned knock-on delays could continue. The provider said the incident was unrelated to a software fault on September 8, which caused more than 2,000 flights to be cancelled and disrupted hundreds of thousands of passengers. Airports south of Manchester were broadly unaffected, NATS said, while flights heading north and departing from Scottish airports experienced delays. Disruption was reported at Edinburgh, Glasgow, Newcastle, Manchester, Belfast and London airports, as well as at Dublin. Edinburgh Airport chief executive Gordon Dewar said the second issue in a month was incredibly disappointing and that the system was clearly not working after two failures in weeks. He said the disruption could ripple into Tuesday.