Disruption expected to continue after technical problems caused flights from UK's major airports to be cancelled or delayed
Technical problems that caused a day of cancellations and delays at the UK's major airports on Saturday have been resolved, aviation officials announced.
Thousands of passengers were affected by the glitch at the National Air Traffic Services' (Nats) control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire – which deals with air traffic in the south of England. A fifth of all flights were cancelled at Heathrow, Stansted and Gatwick airports while others faced delays of up to two hours.
"The problem that arose this morning with the ground communications system in the area control operations room at Nats Swanwick has now been resolved and operations are returning to normal," a Nats spokesman said shortly after 7.30pm.
"The technical and operational contingency measures we have had in place all day have enabled us to deliver more than 80% of our normal operation."
Luton, Southampton, London City, Cardiff, Bristol, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin airports also reported delays.
The spokesman said Nats regretted the disruption caused but insisted that passenger safety had not been compromised. He said problems arose during a switch from night to daytime operations, when communication systems failed to adjust.
"To be clear, this is a very complex and sophisticated system with more than a million lines of software. This is not simply internal telephones, it is the system that controllers use to speak to other [air traffic control] agencies both in the UK and Europe and is the biggest system of its kind in Europe.
"This has been a major challenge for our engineering team and for the manufacturer, who has worked closely with us to ensure this complex problem was resolved as quickly as possible while maintaining a safe service."
Although the problem was fixed on Saturday evening, disruption was expected to continue as airports worked to clear the backlog.
The Airport Operators' Association said travellers should contact their airline directly for flight information.
Passengers at Heathrow airport, Europe's busiest, suffered delays of more than an hour on many morning departures, and several dozen short-haul flights to destinations including Nice, Milan and Istanbul were cancelled.
"We are doing all we can to minimise disruption to our flights, but there will inevitably be a number of short-haul cancellations at some UK and European airports," she said.
"Given that Heathrow is the world's busiest two-runway airport and Gatwick is the world's busiest single-runway airport, there will be problems for all airlines."
A spokeswoman for Gatwick airport said 20% of its flights had faced delays of up to two hours.
A Stansted airport spokesman said all of its departing flights had been subject to delays of between 30 minutes and two hours, while Gatwick airport said 20% of its departures had been delayed, with passengers warned they could have to wait "a couple of hours".
On its website, Ryanair apologised for any inconvenience: "Ryanair has been advised of an equipment failure within UK air traffic control which will cause significant flight delays and possible cancellations."
Chris Yates, an aviation expert said that it would be a difficult day for anyone flying on Saturday.
"It's going to be a day of frustrations and the knock-on effects are going to last for the whole day because of the backlog of planes," he said.
Yates said Swanwick controls all aircraft over the South of England, meaning thousands of passengers would be affected.
"There are contingency plans in place whenever this happens," he said. "Many of the long-haul flights, coming from China, India, the US and so on, passengers sitting on those planes may find themselves diverted to continental airports.
"But it's going to be a long wait for them. When the system kicks back in and starts working, there will be a backlog of flights.
"For those waiting to fly out, it's going to be a case of sitting around the airport terminal until things get back to normal."
Passenger Daisy McAndrew said she had been caught in the "unholy mess" at Gatwick as she tried to fly to Barcelona for work.
"As ever, staff have been fantastic but they know nothing other than the fact it is going to be a very, very long delay – very frustrating," McAndrew told Sky News.
"And also, it's embarrassing, isn't it? When you look around a lot of people on my plane are not British, they are flying British Airways, they are probably trying to get back to Spain and they will inevitably be thinking this is something that could have possibly been prevented.
"It doesn't show our air traffic control system or our travel system in a good light.
"I have never heard of an example where every single plane is grounded – it's quite eerie when I look out of the window to see the [runway] in Gatwick, normally so busy, and also the sky above Gatwick which is normally busy – completely static, there's nothing moving."
A spokesman for Cardiff airport said all flights on Saturday morning had been affected.
Incoming flights from Glasgow, Dublin and Amsterdam were delayed with no estimated time of arrival.
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