Air travel at Scotland's busiest airport was thrown into disarray on Friday morning due to a significant IT failure affecting its air traffic control systems.
Morning Travel Suspended
Operations at Edinburgh Airport were temporarily suspended after the technical issue arose with its air traffic control provider, Air Navigation Solutions (ANS). The disruption began in the morning of Friday 05 December 2025, leading to a halt in all departures and arrivals for a period of time.
Airport teams worked urgently to address the problem, with the airport stating they were focused on resolving the issue "as soon as possible" to minimise passenger inconvenience.
Service Restored
By approximately 10.45am, the airport confirmed that normal service had been restored. A spokesman issued a statement announcing: "Flights at Edinburgh Airport have now resumed following the IT issue with ANS (Air Navigation Solutions), our air traffic control provider."
The statement also extended gratitude to affected travellers, adding: "We thank passengers for their patience and understanding." It was confirmed that the technical fault was not connected to the wider Cloudflare outage that had impacted other online services.
Scale of the Disruption
The incident impacted one of the UK's major aviation hubs. Edinburgh Airport is the sixth busiest in the UK and the busiest in Scotland, having served a substantial 15.8 million passengers in the previous year.
During the outage, Nats, the body responsible for managing most of UK airspace, stated it would "work closely with the airlines impacted and support as best we can." The airport's provider, ANS, was approached for comment on the cause of the technical failure.
