UK flight delays continue after issue with air traffic control in Scotland is resolved

A "technical issue" with air traffic control in Scotland which has been causing delays to flights in the UK has been fixed, but disruption continues.

The national air traffic service (Nats) said engineers were called in to deal with the issue at the Prestwick Centre in South Ayrshire which handles air traffic control across Scotland and the north of England.

A spokesperson for Nats said the issue had now been resolved and they were working with airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations and minimise further disruption.

The service said the issue was not related to a software defect that led to the cancellation of 2,000 flights across the UK earlier this month.

Flights in Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England disrupted by air traffic control issue

The Nats spokesperson said: "The issue in our Prestwick centre is now fixed. We are working with airports and airlines to safely lift air traffic regulations as quickly as we can to minimise any further disruption.

"Passengers should still check the status of their flight with their airline. We apologise for the disruption."

UK Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander posted on social media that the problems were "deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue".

Scotland's First Minister John Swinney said: "We'll engage with the national air traffic control service to ensure that these issues are addressed and that the resilience is necessary for these systems is available at all times."

Passengers have also taken to social media to confirm they are experiencing delays at Glasgow, Prestwick and Edinburgh airports.

Delays are also being reported at Manchester, Newcastle and Belfast airports.

The Manchester Airports Group said there have been delays of up to an hour on some flights at Manchester Airport and there are also delays at East Midlands Airport.

Several arrivals and departures at Belfast City Airport are cancelled, including flights to and from Manchester, Amsterdam, London City and, later on towards lunchtime, Glasgow and Edinburgh.

Dundee and Benbecula airports have also confirmed flights are impacted.

A spokesperson for Edinburgh Airport said: "We are experiencing some delays due to the Nats issue at Prestwick Centre.

"We are monitoring the situation closely and are working with Nats as they work to resolve the issue."

A spokesperson for AGS, which operates Glasgow, Aberdeen and Southampton airports, said: "Some services operating to and from our airports are experiencing delays, primarily at Glasgow Airport, and further disruption is expected due to the knock-on impact across the network.

"This is the second time in as many weeks that a Nats technical issue has had a significant impact on services operating through our airports, and we fully appreciate the frustration this will cause those whose travel plans have been disrupted."

A spokesperson for Highlands and Islands airports said flight schedules are being impacted across their 11 regional airports.

Ryanair said they had been notified of a Nats "equipment failure" affecting airspace above Scotland and northern England.

The airline said it was impacting flights to and from the UK and Ireland.

A Nats spokesperson earlier said: "Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are currently subject to some delay."

Nicole McCloskey, from Kilmarnock, was due to be on a cancelled flight to Paris with her husband and daughters Aoife and Nuala.

She said: "We've rebooked another flight for this afternoon. Fingers crossed it's sorted in time.

"We were supposed to be going for four nights and going to Disney. Even if it is a shorter trip, we will get there."

Frank Bonner was due to be jetting off from Glasgow to Las Vegas to be best man at a friend's wedding but is now frantically trying to get another flight.

"It's our flight to London that's cancelled. We'll hopefully get there later but we're going to lose a day because the connection to Vegas won't be until tomorrow, we'll need a hotel tonight.

"The wedding is at the weekend but we had other plans like a helicopter ride that we won't make.

"Talk about best man nerves, I don't want to be having to deal with this."

Lewis Fraser from Inverness is on board a plane stuck on the runway at Glasgow Airport.

He told BBC News: "We boarded the flight as normal but were immediately told we were delayed.

"The latest update was around half an hour ago to say we might be waiting another hour and 45 minutes. Some passengers have left the plane in the last few minutes."

He is travelling to Heathrow to get a connecting flight to Chicago but said making his connection seemed "unlikely".

Airlines have expressed frustration at the problem which came just days after Nats published an initial report into a "software defect" which impacted air traffic control operations on 8 September.

Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe told BBC News he would not resign, saying the software defect was "very, very obscure".

Ryanair said the latest issue had impacted 140 of its flights and 25,000 passengers, and called on Rolfe to quit.

Ryanair's chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, said: "Just three days after Nats assured airlines and passengers that it had introduced robust 'mitigation plans', its flight data processing system has failed again.

"Martin Rolfe's report claimed that another failure was 'unlikely' and that Nats could recover more quickly if one occurred. Those claims have been exposed as completely worthless.

"Just three days later, passengers are once again suffering lengthy delays because Nats has failed to deliver either a reliable system or an effective back-up."

He called for Rolfe to resign or be removed from his position.

Steve Heapy, chief executive of Jet2, said customers being let down again was "simply not good enough".

He said: "Once again, airlines and customers are being disrupted by yet another Nats issue, and one has to ask: how many more failures do customers and airlines have to deal with.

"Customers work hard to look forward to their holidays, and airlines work hard to deliver those holidays. They should not be repeatedly exposed to delays and disruption because the UK's air traffic control systems cannot be relied upon."

British Airways said it was "disappointing" that some customers may experience disruption after "yet another technical fault with Nats".

Nats is the UK's leading provider of air traffic control services and handles about 2.5 million flights per year.

This is the fourth national air traffic incident in the past three years.

In 2023, a computer shutdown over the August bank holiday weekend caused chaos for 700,000 passengers.

There was another, smaller, Nats outage in 2025 which caused 150 cancellations.

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