Manchester Airport, Teesside Airport and Leeds Bradford Airport issue updates on widespread Nats issues
Three north of England airports have issued updated statements following issues on Tuesday which caused hundreds of flights across the UK to be cancelled.
It comes as British Airways today said it had “no choice” but to cancel more than 190 flights following issues at Nats – the UK's main provider of air traffic control services.
Ryanair also said it had also been forced to cancel 250 flights with costs to the company expected to “run into the millions”.
In an update issued to The Yorkshire Post, Manchester Airport said that it was now “operating as normal”, but confirmed that eight flights had been cancelled today.
The airport said three of the cancelled flights were to Heathrow, which was currently operating at capacity for arrivals due to cancellations yesterday.
A Manchester Airport spokesperson said: "Following yesterday's NATS air traffic control issue, the airport is operating as normal.
"Those travelling today should continue with their journey plans and check with their airline for the latest information on their flight as usual."
It comes after Leeds Bradford airport was also hit by four cancellations last night, with two Ryanair flights, one KLM flight and one Jet2 flight cancelled.
The company said in an update that no flights had been cancelled this morning due to the Nats issues.
Teesside Airport also told The Yorkshire Post that it was experiencing “minimal disruption”, and that it had “not been affected” by the Nats issues.
East Midlands and Stanstead, which are also operated by Manchester Airport Group, are operating “as usual” but slightly busier, The Yorkshire Post understands.
Stansted was given dispensation to operate overnight due to the issues.
It comes after the boss of Nats apologised for the widespread disruption to flights since Tuesday.
Nats’ chief executive Martin Rolfe told BBC Radio 4’s Today Programme: “Inevitably, things do go wrong in complex systems.
“We never want them to. We always hope they won’t, but we absolutely plan for them to and make sure we handle them properly.”
Mr Rolfe also ruled out a cyber attack as the cause of the issues.
He added: “My focus and that of the team has been on both getting our system operating back up normally, which it is now, but there’s obviously a huge tail to the disruption and we’ll be working on that through the course of today.
“And then our attention will turn to exactly what’s happened in this particular incident.”
Asked about the disruption, Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told BBC Breakfast: “First of all, I want to apologise to all of the passengers who have faced disruption.
“This is frankly unacceptable. It was a problem at the National Air Traffic Service, but we can’t have this happen again.
“The Transport Secretary is calling in the head of the Nats, the National Air Traffic Service, this morning to get answers to this.
“Frankly, we’ve got to have our airports running smoothly and properly, without those problems, and that is what the Transport Secretary will be asking for from the head of the National Air Traffic Service.”
Nats has said Tuesday’s incident was “not the same issue” as an air traffic control fault in August 2023.
It came after Ryanair’s chief operating officer said today that Tuesday’s Nats incident was caused by the “exactly the same issue” as a problem in 2023.
Asked whether the latest problem was the same as the crisis on August bank holiday 2023, Nats said: “This was not the same issue.
“We will conduct a full investigation to establish what happened and identify any further action required.”
In August 2023, more than 700,000 passengers experienced disruption when flights were grounded at UK airports when Nats suffered a technical glitch while processing a flight plan.