NATS flight cancellations at Newcastle International Airport and across the UK were triggered by a millisecond-duration software defect in the National Airspace System, not human error, AviNews reports, with more than 2,000 UK flights cancelled on 8 September as the fallout rolled into a second day.
The disruption hit Newcastle hard. Four departures were axed on Wednesday morning alone: the 6.05am BA1341 to Heathrow, the 7.20am EZY5605 to Amsterdam, the 8.50am EZY238 to Bristol, and the 11.05am BA1329 to Heathrow. Two inbound services were also cancelled: EasyJet’s EZY237 from Bristol and BA’s BA1328 from London Heathrow.
How bad did NATS flight cancellations at Newcastle get on Tuesday?
The trouble started on Tuesday afternoon. National Air Traffic Services (NATS) confirmed at 1.46pm that engineers were on site investigating a technical issue disrupting flight departures. By 3.25pm, NATS had identified the fault in its flight processing system. A fix was implemented later that afternoon, but the backlog proved brutal.
Flight monitoring website Flightradar24 put Tuesday’s total at 1,300 flights cancelled to and from UK airports. By 4pm UTC, 425 cancellations had been logged for that day alone. NATS, which provides air traffic control services to 15 UK airports, said tens of thousands of passengers were caught up in the chaos at airports including Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Newcastle and Stansted.
Newcastle passenger Kerry Smith had a grim Tuesday. Trying to travel to Dalaman on the 1.55pm EasyJet flight, she told Active Newcastle she was initially told to expect four and a half hours in a holding position before takeoff. Her flight was eventually given a departure time of 8.20pm, over six hours after she was meant to leave. It was later cancelled anyway. ‘They’ve cancelled it and given us no information, we just got a text,’ she said. ‘We are still stuck in the airport and no alternatives have been offered.’
On Tuesday night NATS said on X: ‘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. Passengers should check with their airline on the status of their flight tonight or tomorrow.’
CEO under fire and Transport Secretary to be briefed
NATS chief executive officer Martin Rolfe faced pointed questions about his position. Speaking to Sky News, he said: ‘I am the CEO of a piece of critical infrastructure, so it is my job to take responsibility for that. What I absolutely take responsibility for is keeping people safe and delivering the best service we possibly can on a day like today.’
Rolfe was set to speak with Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander on Wednesday before she addressed MPs in the Commons for the second reading of the Civil Aviation Bill. Alexander had already said she was ‘seeking assurances that lessons will be learned and systems that support aviation are up to the job.’
The criticism went further than Westminster. According to Morningstar, Ryanair Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon said: ‘Martin Rolfe has presided over repeated system failures, repeated passenger disruption and repeated failures to deliver an effective back-up system.’ That criticism carries extra weight given context Morningstar also reported: last July a radar-related issue caused a separate air traffic control failure that disrupted thousands of passengers and forced the cancellation of more than 160 flights.
This latest episode now confirmed as a software fault, not an operational misjudgement, raises uncomfortable questions about the resilience of the systems underpinning UK airspace. The September 8 defect lasted just milliseconds but the recovery, as passengers at Newcastle and across the country found out the hard way, took far longer.
If your flight is affected, check directly with your airline. Both British Airways and EasyJet are offering free rebooking to the next available flight, and BA has said it can discuss hotel accommodation where the next available flight does not depart until the following day. Rolfe’s meeting with the Transport Secretary on Wednesday is the next formal step in the official response.