A technical problem at Prestwick in Ayrshire disrupted airports across Scotland, Northern Ireland and northern England, delaying dozens of flights.
Nats said a “connectivity issue” caused the disruption. It said the problem was unrelated to a separate software defect at Swanwick that led to the cancellation of 2,000 flights earlier in September.
At least 200 flights cancelled or did not fly
According to aviation analytics company Cirium, at least 200 flights had been cancelled or did not fly on Monday as of 13:45 BST. The figure included 100 scheduled arrivals into the UK and 99 scheduled departures from the UK.
EasyJet was the worst affected airline, with 47 of its 670 scheduled departures cancelled. British Airways had 11 cancellations from its 513 scheduled departures.
Airlines call for changes at Nats
Industry representative body Airlines UK said passengers and airlines “deserve better” after what it called “yet another Nats failure”.
Wizz Air UK managing director Yvonne Moynihan called for “urgent reform” of Nats and said she did not have confidence in its current leadership.
The separate Swanwick incident affected hundreds of thousands of passengers, with some sleeping on airport floors or becoming stuck overseas. It was more severe because it affected intercontinental and long-haul travel via UK airspace.
Nats said in a report last week that the Swanwick software glitch occurred “in the space of a millisecond” and caused the system to produce corrupted data.
Related: UK flight cancellations continue after NATS technical issue
Source: BBC News
