Hundreds of thousands of air passengers faced delayed or cancelled flights on Tuesday after a technical fault at UK air traffic control provider Nats grounded planes for several hours, prompting airlines to renew calls for an overhaul of the system. It was the third large-scale disruption blamed on Nats' systems in just over three years, following major outages in 2023 and 2025, with airline bosses accusing the organisation of repeated failures that leave passengers to bear the cost.

At least 600 flights in and out of the UK were cancelled by late Tuesday afternoon, with the fault beginning around 1pm and initially affecting departures before spreading to arrivals across much of southern England. Nats implemented a fix by 4.40pm, but disruption continued into the evening, with British Airways warning of knock-on effects into Wednesday. Ryanair reported 65,000 passengers delayed and 50 flights cancelled, while FlightRadar24 data showed easyJet, BA, KLM, Eurowings and Ryanair among the worst-hit carriers. Ryanair again called for Nats chief executive Martin Rolfe to resign, and BA said the incident, entirely outside its control, had forced it to cancel or divert more than 100 flights.