British Airways cancelled nearly 550 flights on 10 September 2026 across its UK network, affecting more than 85,000 customers. Airports impacted included Heathrow and Gatwick, where disruptions caused widespread scheduling issues.
Wednesday Operational Adjustments and Recovery Efforts
On 9 September 2026, British Airways cancelled over 190 flights, operating about 80% of its planned schedule. The ongoing disruption left aircraft and crews out of position, complicating recovery efforts. British Airways stated at 09:00 on 10 September that its teams were working to restore normal operations following the outage.
The airline acknowledged and thanked employees who worked beyond regular shifts or volunteered to assist customers during the disruption.
Passenger Options for Rebooking and Flight Changes
Since the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) outage began on Tuesday, 8 September 2026, British Airways rebooked over 60,000 affected passengers on alternative flights. Customers booked for travel on 10 September have the option to make free flight changes through British Airways’ Manage My Booking service until Sunday, 13 September 2026.
Passengers no longer wishing to travel on Thursday can cancel their flights without penalty under the airline’s temporary policy.
Cause of Disruption and Official Responses
The cancellations resulted from an air traffic control outage at NATS, the UK’s air traffic management organization. The outage disrupted British Airways’ scheduling and left crews and aircraft out of
place across the network.
British Airways attributed the flight cancellations on 10 September directly to the NATS failure. NATS CEO Martin Rolfe stated that the latest outage stemmed from a different issue than previous incidents. Transport Minister Heidi Alexander summoned Rolfe for a meeting and called for an independent review by the Civil Aviation Authority to investigate the outage.
