UK airports suffer air traffic control issue due to disruption

UK airports suffer air traffic control issue due to disruption.

Major disruption may continue at British airports on Wednesday – including Heathrow, one of Europe’s busiest hubs – after an hours-long air traffic control outage triggered widespread delays and cancellations.

Earlier in the day, departure boards at London airports Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted showed dozens of flights delayed or canceled. Other airports, including Manchester, also reported disruption.

The issue caused some 1,300 cancellations to or from airports in the UK on Tuesday, according to aircraft tracker Flightradar24.

“177 flights have been canceled so far on Wednesday, nearly all at London-Heathrow,” it said.

It is the second major outage in two years to affect passengers at Heathrow, the world’s seventh-busiest airport by passenger traffic in 2025, according to data from the Airports Council International. More than 84 million people passed through last year.