Heathrow Airport is restricting arrivals until 10pm on Tuesday as the fallout from a NATS air traffic control fault continues into the evening, despite engineers fixing the underlying technical problem hours earlier.
According to the Evening Standard, NATS said the fault struck its flight processing system at the Swanwick control centre in Hampshire, which handles air traffic across southern England, and confirmed a fix was implemented at around 4.40pm. However, NATS said the system was only "starting to recover" and cautioned that restoring normal operations fully would take some time, urging passengers to keep checking with their airline before travelling.
The disruption has grown significantly since it first emerged in the early afternoon. IBTimes UK reported that more than 400 UK flights had been cancelled by the evening, with Flightradar24 data showing 425 cancellations nationally by 5pm and Cirium data putting cancellations at Heathrow and Gatwick alone at around 90 by 4.15pm. The Mirror reported the toll had risen further, with more than 600 departing flights cancelled from at least 16 UK airports by early evening, and confirmed that arrivals have been restricted until 10pm at Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted, and until 11.55pm at London City.
Heathrow initially said only departures were affected before confirming, as reported by IBTimes UK, that the NATS issue was "impacting arriving and departing flights across UK airports," and advised passengers to check directly with their airline and to travel to the airport only once their flight was confirmed.