Yesterday’s IT failure of the UK’s National Air Traffic Control System (Nats) has caused major disruption, impacting airports, airlines and passengers.
The BBC reported that tens of thousands of passengers were hit by disruption that saw more than 1,750 flights cancelled on Tuesday, with a further 153 cancelled since at the time of writing.
Nats first acknowledged that problems began appearing yesterday at 1:46 pm. At the time, it said: “We are investigating a technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures. Our engineers are on site and we will provide an update as soon as we can.”
At 4:40 pm, Nats said it had implemented a fix and that its flight system was starting to recover. However, at 10:10 pm, it issued a statement saying that recovery from the IT system issue it had experienced was taking longer to fix, and that it was continuing to assist airlines and airports to recover from disruption arising from the IT failure.
“This has been a very complex recovery and has created difficulties for the whole aviation network, from which it will take time to recover. We apologise again for the disruption caused,” Nats said.
Ryanair’s chief operations officer, Neal McMahon, called out Martin Rolfe, CEO of Nats. In a video posted on the social media platform X, he said: “Once again we are trying to deal with another UK ATC [air traffic control] failure at the hands of Nats. Over 50 flights today have been cancelled and hundreds more delayed due to yet another IT failure at Nats, which is causing mass disruption across all UK airports.”
Despite promises, reports and assurances that Nats would fix the systems, McMahon called for the UK government to intervene to get Nats up and running, and fix what he described as “as the chronic ATC issues”.
McMahon also said that in spite of ATC charges increasing by 28%, Ryanair has experienced worse performance. “We once again call on the UK government to fix the UK ATC and put somebody in charge who can do the job,” he added.
Nats has been a public-private partnership for the past 25 years. Its annual statement, published in March 2026, shows that it invested £215.5m in capital expenditure, focusing on air traffic control infrastructure, to accelerate the replacement of the National Airspace System Flight Data Processor.
The annual report also shows it has begun consulting the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA), airline customers and other stakeholders on proposed service outcomes, costs and charges for the five calendar years of 2028 to 2032, which it said are needed for Nats to achieve its goal of continuing to be safe, resilient and secure in the face of growing air travel demand and emerging challenges.
Following a major incident impacting Nats in 2023, the CAA recommended the operator make 34 changes. The authors of the Nats major incident investigation final report recommended that Nats review the current command structure, its supporting technology and processes, and analyse whether the current model is likely to lead to the best outcomes in the majority of incidents, or whether it can be optimised further with the addition of alternative options.
