Manchester Airport flights delayed after Nats IT issue

Flights at Manchester Airport have been delayed on Monday, September 21, following an issue at National Air Traffic Services’ Prestwick centre in Scotland.

Nats said flights heading north and those departing Scottish airports were subject to delays, while airports south of Manchester were “broadly unaffected”.

By around 10.35am, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander said engineers had fixed the problem and systems were resuming, although she warned there could still be delays while operations reset.

She said: “There has been a further IT issue affecting Nats. Engineers have fixed the problem and systems are resuming.

“I know this will be deeply frustrating for passengers after the previous issue.

“There may be some delays as things reset. Please check with your airline for updates.”

The latest disruption comes less than two weeks after another Nats technical problem caused widespread disruption across the UK on September 8, including at Manchester Airport.

Nats has stressed that Monday’s problem is unrelated to the earlier incident.

A Nats spokesperson said: “Our engineers are continuing to investigate the issue at our Prestwick centre in Scotland.

“Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are currently subject to some delay.

“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption.”

Aviation analytics company Cirium said Manchester Airport was among the airports which had seen the most cancellations or flights classed by the company as “no flies” on Monday morning.

According to figures supplied by Cirium at 9.58am, Manchester had recorded four cancellations or “no flies”.

The company uses the latter category for flights delayed by more than three hours.

Airlines have criticised Nats following the latest disruption.

EasyJet said the latest problem “calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems”.

The airline said: “A Nats air traffic control system failure in its Prestwick centre is causing delays to flights with some unable to operate.

“This, once again, calls into question the resilience of Nats’ systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.

“We will do all we can minimise the impact of this for our customers and advise anyone due to fly today to check our flight tracker for the latest information.”

Jet2 chief executive Steve Heapy also called for “action, accountability and proper resilience”.

He said: “Customers work hard to look forward to their holidays and airlines work hard to deliver those holidays.

“They should not be repeatedly exposed to delays and disruption because the UK’s air traffic control systems cannot be relied upon.

“There have been too many incidents, too many reports and too many promises of lessons being learned.”

Mr Heapy said Jet2 was counting the cost of the disruption and would be sending another bill to Nats.

British Airways also said some of its customers were likely to experience disruption following what it described as “yet another technical fault with Nats”.

The previous Nats outage caused significant problems at Manchester Airport, with around 70 arrivals and departures cancelled during the initial disruption and further cancellations continuing into the following day.

More than 2,000 flights arriving or departing the UK were ultimately affected over two days, according to figures previously reported following that incident.

Monday’s problem was centred on Prestwick rather than the earlier nationwide issue and Nats has explicitly said the two incidents are unrelated.

Passengers travelling through Manchester Airport today have been advised to check the latest status of their flight directly with their airline.