Technical Issue at Met Office Causes Widespread Flight Disruptions
A technical problem at the Met Office prevented the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) from receiving essential weather information, leading to hundreds of flight delays across the UK on Tuesday morning. The disruption primarily affected low-cost carriers Ryanair and easyJet, with thousands of passengers facing extended waits at airports.
According to NATS, the issue began overnight and resulted in air traffic restrictions being imposed early Tuesday. These restrictions have since been lifted, but the knock-on effects continued throughout the day. A NATS spokesperson stated: "A Met Office technical issue overnight meant that we were not receiving vital weather information into our NATS systems this morning. Accurate weather information is vital for air traffic controllers and pilots in managing flights safely. As a result, some air traffic restrictions were put in place early this morning and these have now been removed. We continue to work with the Met Office, who are working to fully resolve the problem."
Ryanair and easyJet Hit Hardest
Ryanair reported that 163 of its flights were delayed, impacting nearly 30,000 passengers, with delays of up to three hours. EasyJet faced even greater disruption, with 253 flights delayed – representing 13% of its total planned departures for the day. The delays caused frustration among holidaymakers and business travelers alike.
Ryanair Chief Operations Officer Neal McMahon criticised NATS, saying: "Nearly three years after NATS catastrophic 2023 system meltdown, UK passengers are once again being delayed because NATS' systems have failed. Today's outage delayed 155 Ryanair flights and disrupted almost 30,000 Ryanair passengers. Families travelling on holiday, people travelling for work and thousands of visitors to the UK have once again paid the price for NATS' failure."
Recurrence of 2023 NATS Meltdown
The incident echoes a major NATS failure in August 2023, when a technical glitch caused over 700,000 passengers to face cancellations and delays, with some waiting days for alternative flights. An investigation by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) found that a single flight from Los Angeles to Paris triggered the failure due to a duplicate flight code (DVL) representing both Deauville, France, and Devil's Lake, North Dakota, USA. The issue occurred at 8:30 am BST on August 28, 2023, and an engineer took over three hours to reach the site but could not fix the problem. The system was finally restored at 2:30 pm after manufacturer Frequentis Comsoft identified the fault.
Following an independent review, panel chair Jeff Halliwell said: "The incident on 28 August 2023 represented a major failure on the part of the air traffic control system, which caused considerable distress to over 700,000 aviation passengers, and resulted in substantial costs to airlines and airports. Our report sets out a number of recommendations aimed at improving NATS' operations and, even more importantly, ways in which the aviation sector as a whole should work together more closely to ensure that, if something like this does ever happen again, passengers are better looked after."
CAA Chief Executive Rob Bishton added: "This final report gets to the heart of what went wrong in August 2023 and sets out a number of recommendations that are sector-wide in their scope. It is vital that we learn the lessons from any major incident such as this. I would personally like to thank the Panel for all of their efforts in producing a thorough and wide-ranging report, that will help improve the UK’s aviation system for the future."
Current Situation
As of Tuesday afternoon, NATS confirmed that the restrictions had been removed and systems were operating normally. The Met Office has been contacted for comment regarding the technical issue. Passengers are advised to check with their airlines for the latest flight information.
