FLIGHT CHAOS: Hundreds of flights cancelled in air traffic failure, with Cardiff and Bristol affected

Anyone flying tonight or tomorrow morning is being told to check with their airline before leaving home, after a technical failure at the UK’s air traffic control provider grounded departures across the country.

Hundreds of flights were cancelled after NATS, which manages UK airspace and provides air traffic control at 15 airports, suffered a fault in its flight-processing system on Tuesday afternoon.

Flight tracker FlightRadar24 counted Cardiff and Bristol among the airports affected, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham hit worst.

Cardiff Airport played the disruption down. “The impact at Cardiff Airport is currently minimal though we’d encourage passengers to check directly with their airline or travel operator for the latest information on the status of their flight,” a spokesperson said.

Bristol Airport, the nearest base for many south Wales passengers, also urged travellers to check their flight status before setting off.

By late afternoon NATS said a fix was in place. “We have implemented a fix and our flight system is starting to recover,” the company said. “We are continuing to work closely with our airline and airport customers on recovery.”

It added: “We apologise sincerely for the disruption to people’s journeys today and they should continue to check with their airline.”

The damage will take time to unwind. FlightRadar24 put around 4% of UK flights cancelled or delayed by late afternoon and warned a further wave of cancellations was likely as airlines decide which services to run to move the most passengers.

Its figures showed 352 flights to and from Heathrow delayed out of a daily average of around 1,300, with 281 delayed at Gatwick, 249 at Manchester and 101 at Birmingham.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said engineers were “fixing it as we speak”, adding: “I know this will be frustrating for passengers and I’m sorry.”

Refunds, food vouchers and hotel rooms: what you can claim

If your flight is cancelled, you are entitled to a full refund or a free rebooking, including on another airline where necessary. Cash compensation is unlikely for today’s disruption, because air traffic control failures count as outside the airline’s control.

The airline still has to look after you in a long delay, though: after two hours on a short-haul flight, three on medium-haul or four on long-haul, it must provide food and drink, a means of communication, and a hotel with transfers if you are stranded overnight.

The failure is the latest in a run for NATS, coming a little over a year after a technical fault at its Swanwick control centre disrupted flights in July 2025, and three years after the 2023 flight-plan failure that airlines said cost them more than £100m.

Cardiff’s flight schedule for this evening and tomorrow morning is on the airport’s live departures page, and every airline is directing passengers to its own app for rebooking.