More than 250 flights were cancelled across UK airports on September 21, 2026, due to a technical failure at the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) control centre in Prestwick, Scotland. EasyJet alone cancelled over 20 flights as a direct result of the incident.
The outage reduced air traffic capacity through Scottish-controlled airspace by approximately 60%. Capacity for some transatlantic departures between Britain, Europe, and North America was cut by around 40%, increasing the risk of delays on those routes.
Significant disruption was reported at Scottish airports including Edinburgh and Glasgow. Northern Ireland and northern England also experienced flight cancellations and
delays. Meanwhile, airports south of Manchester remained broadly unaffected.
During the outage, some flight processing was carried out manually to manage the backlog. Ryanair reported delays to over 140 flights impacting more than 25,000 passengers. In total, at least 24 flights were cancelled across other affected UK airports, with dozens more delayed. Aviation analytics firm Cirium noted that operational performance was expected to deteriorate as the day progressed.
NATS stated it is “working with airports and airlines to… minimise any further disruption.” A NATS spokesperson confirmed that the Prestwick incident is unrelated to a separate software glitch outage on September
8 and 9 that led to over 2,000 flight cancellations. Transport minister Heidi Alexander described the cause as an “IT issue” on social media, acknowledging the frustration for passengers. Ryanair renewed calls for the resignation of NATS CEO Martin Rolfe following the repeated disruptions.
NATS operates as a public-private partnership with the UK government holding a 49% stake and a golden share giving strategic oversight. The group has faced multiple operational failures in recent years, including a major system failure in 2023 and a technical glitch in July 2025 that caused widespread flight cancellations.
