Over 40 flights cancelled at Dublin Airport due to air traffic control issues in the UK

LAST UPDATE | 1 hr ago

OVER 40 FLIGHTS have been cancelled at Dublin Airport as a result of air traffic control issues in the UK.

Dublin Airport had earlier warned of knock-on delays due to issues in the UK, but in a passenger update at 5pm, it confirmed that over 40 flights had been cancelled.

As of 5pm, airlines have cancelled 23 outbound and 21 inbound flights at Dublin Airport.

A spokesperson for Dublin Airport said that further disruption is possible as the evening goes on.

Passengers scheduled to fly this evening are advised to get in touch with their airline directly for latest updates on their flight.

UK air traffic control issues

More than 400 flights have been cancelled in the UK, with tens of thousands of passengers facing disruption after an air traffic control issue.

Nats, which provides air traffic control services in the UK, said in a statement this afternoon that it is investigating a “technical issue which is causing some disruption to flight departures”.

It added that this would result in a “delay” to some journeys and that passengers should check with their airline on the status of their flight.

A later statement said that Nats had identified that the “issue was in our flight processing system” and that engineers were on site and working urgently to resume normal operations as quickly as possible.

Nats added that while flights are still departing and airspace is open, the “recovery will take some time”.

As of 4.45pm, Nats said it had implemented a “fix” and that its flight system is starting to recover.

At about 7.30pm, Nats announced the “system issue” had been resolved.

“We are operating normally and working as hard as possible to clear the backlog of flights,” a statement on X said.

Josie Donoghue was one of the many air passengers impacted and she had to get off her flight to Shannon after spending three hours on the runway.

The healthcare worker boarded the Ryanair plane to Shannon at around 3pm and said that “everything seemed fine” until passengers were informed the flight would be delayed due to an issue with air traffic control.

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Donoghue said: “Getting through that airport was like trying to get out of Alcatraz. We were trapped in there. We were told we couldn’t get out until the flights were cancelled, and then eventually they allowed us to get out.”

Ryanair said more than 65,000 of its passengers had been disrupted and it had cancelled more than 50 scheduled flights.

Meanwhile, EasyJet said some of its flights were “unable to operate” following the issue which was causing delays to flights across Europe.

Birmingham Airport said the issue was affecting airspace in the south of the UK and was “impacting a significant number of departing flights across the country”.

Heathrow Airport, the UK’s largest airport in west London, confirmed it was among those impacted but said arriving flights were “currently not affected” in a statement this afternoon.

Manchester Airport Group, the company that operates Manchester Airport, Stansted Airport in Essex and East Midlands Airport in Leicestershire, said flights from all three had been affected by the issue.

Jersey Airport in the Channel Islands, London City Airport, London Southend, Aberdeen, Glasgow, Southampton and Belfast airports said they were also experiencing some disruption.

Around 200 flights were cancelled this afternoon because of the air traffic control issue, with that number expected to rise, flight monitoring website Flightradar24 said.

The worst affected airports are Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham, according to Flightradar24.

The air tracker found 352 flights to and from Heathrow were delayed out of its daily average of about 1,300.

Meanwhile, 281 Gatwick flights were delayed out of its 850 total operations average. This was 249 out of 650 for Manchester, and 101 out of 300 for Birmingham.

Last July, a “radar-related issue” caused an air traffic control failure that grounded flights across the UK – disrupting thousands of passengers and forcing the cancellation of more than 160 flights.

The problem happened at Nats’ control centre in Swanwick, Hampshire, and affected the vast majority of England and Wales.

A UK Government source said the failure lasted around 20 minutes, and the level of disruption was similar to a day with bad weather.

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.

-With additional reporting from Press Association