Cancellations and delays on UK bound flights after air traffic control outage

Flights from Spain to the UK have reported serious delays, following an outage at UK air traffic control.

Some airlines are reporting delays of up to 12 hours with flights across Europe facing disruption.

On Monday morning Air traffic controllers in the UK announced that they were experiencing technical issues, resulting in flight delays and diversions.

• EasyJet has apologised for the disruption and is providing customers on cancelled flights with the option to transfer their flight free of charge or receive a refund;
• British Airways said its flights are being “severely disrupted” and the airline is “working closely” with NATS to understand the impact;
• Ryanair said it had been forced to delay or cancel “a number of flights” to and from the UK. It “sincerely” apologised for the issue which is “beyond Ryanair’s control”;
• Jet2 says the technical fault has affected “all airlines”, and “all flights departing and returning to the UK are expected to experience significant delays”;
• Tui warned of “significant delays” and also apologised for the inconvenience caused;
• Aer Lingus and Virgin Atlantic have urged passengers to check the status of their flight before heading to the airport;
• Loganair is offering passengers travelling today the opportunity to rebook within the next 48 hours.

European air traffic authority Eurocontrol warned of “very high” delays because of a “flight data processing system failure” in the UK.

Passengers on airlines outside the UK have been informed of the air traffic control network being down. Engineers are working to fix the fault, but the situation is ongoing with updates expected.