A British air traffic control failure cancels over a thousand flights, and NATS chief Martin Rolfe is summoned by the transport secretary

What the comparison reveals

What everyone says

A failure in the flight data processing system at NATS disrupted British air traffic starting Tuesday, September 8, 2026, affecting Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and several other UK airports.
NATS announced the resolution of the technical issue at 18:34 GMT on Tuesday, while stating that safety had not been compromised, but the disruption continued on Wednesday, September 9, with additional cancellations and delays.
NATS CEO Martin Rolfe ruled out a cyberattack as the cause of the failure and was summoned by Transport Minister Heidi Alexander.

Where it breaks apart

Should the head of NATS be replaced? — Some newsrooms are relaying without reserve the calls from airlines to dismiss Martin Rolfe, while others are mainly reporting his version of events and his refusal to comment on a potential resignation.
Isolated incident or recurring failure — Part of the press is explicitly linking the failure to the one in 2023 to question the structural reliability of NATS, while others are treating it as a technical problem without historical perspective.
Domestic crisis or broader network shock — Part of the press is framing the event as a crisis that is essentially British and experienced by passengers, while others are highlighting its spread to airports and airlines on the continent and the risk to the broader air network.

A malfunction in the flight data processing system of British provider NATS disrupted air traffic in the United Kingdom starting Tuesday, September 8, 2026, affecting Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, Stansted, Luton, Birmingham, Edinburgh, and other airports, as well as Dublin in Ireland. Heathrow suspended its arrivals before NATS announced, at 18:34 GMT, the resolution of the technical issue. The disruption continued on Wednesday, September 9, with 177 additional cancellations, nearly all at Heathrow, and around 490 delayed flights in six British airports. The incident occurred three years after a previous major NATS malfunction in 2023.

Martin Rolfe has not resigned despite calls from several airlines, and the exact cause of the malfunction had not yet been established.

Information as of September 9, 2026 at 07:56 AM GMT+2

2023 precedent

The 2023 outage, deemed the worst in several years, affected over 700 000 passengers.

Another incident in 2025

Another technical incident, resolved in a few minutes, had already disrupted traffic in July 2025.

Key figures

1,055
Flights canceled in the United Kingdom as of 20:00 GMT Tuesday, according to Flightradar24
1 source · Adnkronos
177
Additional cancellations on Wednesday, September 9, nearly all at Heathrow
1 source · Malay Mail
65,000
Ryanair passengers affected by delays of up to eight hours
6 sources
- DH (Dernière Heure)