UK and European aviation is being warned to expect more frequent and severe disruption as climate change makes weather systems, particularly thunderstorms, less predictable and more intense. The warning follows chaos in late June, when storms over southern England and northern Europe during a heatwave forced air traffic controllers to reroute aircraft, congesting airspace and grounding many flights that were due to depart from Heathrow and Gatwick. Industry figures believe the incident should serve as a wake-up call, as busy, crowded skies over the UK make the region especially vulnerable to weather-related chaos.

Around 900 flights to and from Heathrow and Gatwick were delayed that day, some by as much as 11 hours, with dozens more cancelled and knock-on disruption for passengers across Europe. Tim Atkinson, an airline risk consultant and former pilot, warns of a worst-case scenario in which storms simultaneously disrupt all four major London airports—Heathrow, Gatwick, Luton and Stansted—overwhelming diversion capacity and potentially endangering safety. At NATS's control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, controllers already monitor storm cells continuously and must restrict or reroute traffic when airspace shrinks, a challenge set to intensify as extreme weather becomes more frequent.