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Thousands of air passengers faced major disruption on Wednesday after a radar-related fault in the UK’s air traffic control system forced the grounding of planes across several major airports, including Heathrow, Manchester, Stansted, and Edinburgh.

Although the technical issue lasted just 20 minutes, its impact rippled throughout the day, causing widespread delays, diversions, and more than 150 flight cancellations by 22:00 BST. The backlog left many travellers stranded and sparked outrage among airlines.

National Air Traffic Services (NATS), which manages UK airspace, said the problem originated at its Swanwick control centre in Hampshire. The issue was swiftly contained by switching to a back-up system, and NATS confirmed there was no indication of a cyberattack, reported BBC. 

“Engineers have restored the affected system, and we are working with affected airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely,” the agency said in a statement, while apologising for the disruption.

The government has said it is in close coordination with NATS to investigate the incident.

This marks the second major outage for the UK’s air traffic control operator in less than two years. A similar failure during the August 2023 bank holiday weekend affected over 700,000 travellers, raising questions over NATS’ resilience.

British Airways, one of the worst-hit carriers, acknowledged ongoing delays and said it was working to resume normal operations. “While this is entirely outside of our control, we apologise to our customers and are doing everything possible to minimise the disruption,” the airline said.

Budget carrier EasyJet urged passengers to check the latest flight updates and said it was contacting affected customers directly.

Ryanair, however, issued a scathing response. The Irish low-cost airline said the chaos dragged on for more than four hours and accused NATS of incompetence, according to Reuters. “This is utterly unacceptable,” said Neal McMahon, Ryanair’s chief operating officer. He called for the resignation of NATS chief executive Martin Rolfe, claiming lessons had not been learned from last year’s meltdown.

“It is clear that no lessons have been learnt since the Aug '23 NATS system outage and passengers continue to suffer as a result of Martin Rolfe’s incompetence,” McMahon said.