Nearly 2,000 flights were cancelled across the United Kingdom on September 10, 2026, following a major technical failure at National Air Traffic Services (NATS). British Airways alone called off almost 550 flights amid the outage, which disrupted operations at Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and other UK airports.
Passenger Impact and Airline Responses
The NATS outage affected approximately 330,000 passengers nationwide. British Airways rebooked over 60,000 customers on alternative flights and allowed free flight changes for journeys between September 10 and September 13. Ryanair reported disruption to more than 65,000 passengers and the cancellation of over 50 scheduled flights due to the incident.
Government and Regulatory Actions
The UK government rejected
a prior proposal mandating NATS to reimburse airlines for passenger compensation arising from its technical failures. The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) classified the September 10 disruption as “extraordinary circumstances,” suggesting passengers affected are unlikely to be entitled to compensation under current passenger rights rules.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander ordered an independent review by the CAA into the root causes of the failure, with a report expected within six months. NATS has been instructed to provide an initial account of the incident within one week. Alexander stated she disagrees with the notion that this outage was unavoidable.
NATS Background and Previous Failures
NATS operates as a
public-private partnership with 49 percent government ownership and 42 percent held by an airline consortium. The September 10 outage marks the third major failure of UK airspace management by NATS in three years, following a widely disruptive incident in August 2023. NATS stated its operations are stable post-incident and pledged a full investigation to establish the cause and necessary remedial steps.
Industry and Political Reactions
Ryanair called for the resignation of NATS CEO Martin Rolfe, citing the repeated failures that disrupted tens of thousands of its passengers. Wizz Air expressed disappointment over the latest outage and criticized NATS for repeatedly causing severe disruption during
peak travel periods.
Liberal Democrat MP Luke Taylor condemned NATS as “not fit for purpose” and urged legislative changes to prevent such outages from recurring annually. Taylor referenced the government’s earlier assurances that NATS had taken measures to avoid repeat failures before the current incident.
A CAA spokesperson noted, “We consider that disruption caused by the NATS outage is likely to be considered the result of ‘extraordinary circumstances’ under passenger rights rules.”
