The second control tower system failure in two weeks led to flight delays in Britain

Air travel in the United Kingdom was temporarily disrupted on Monday, leading to flight delays and cancellations, according to Bloomberg. This is the second such incident following a recent major disruption that led to the cancellation of thousands of flights.

NATS (National Air Traffic Services), a public-private partnership that manages air traffic in the United Kingdom, reported a technical malfunction at its operations center in Prestwick, near Glasgow. This center is responsible for air traffic control over northern England, Scotland, and the North Atlantic, including flights between the UK and North America, Europe, and the Middle East, according to Bloomberg. NATS did not disclose the nature of the malfunction. The company later stated that the problem had been resolved.

Even after that, disruptions to air travel persisted, according to the BBC. According to the BBC, passengers and airport authorities reported flight delays in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Manchester, Newcastle, and Belfast. The problems affected the operations of British Airways, EasyJet, and Ryanair, among others. Ryanair stated that more than 140 of its flights were delayed by up to three hours.

This is not the first major disruption to air travel in the United Kingdom in recent times. The previous incident occurred on September 8, when thousands of flights were canceled at London’s Heathrow and Gatwick airports due to a technical issue.

The September outage has once again raised questions about the resilience of the infrastructure that supports navigation in the UK’s congested airspace, Bloomberg notes. Ryanair called on the CEO of NATS to resign immediately on its website.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor