Flights across Scotland are being disrupted by a fresh air traffic control failure affecting the NATS centre at Prestwick.
Passengers at Glasgow and Edinburgh airports have reported delays of more than an hour, while services across the Highlands and Islands network are also being affected.
National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said engineers were investigating a technical problem at its Prestwick control centre, which manages air traffic across Scotland, northern England and parts of the North Atlantic.
Restrictions have been introduced to reduce the number of aircraft using affected airspace while the problem is investigated.
A NATS spokesperson said: “Our engineers are continuing to investigate the issue at our Prestwick centre in Scotland. Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are now subject to some delay.
“Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption.”
Highlands and Islands Airports Limited said schedules were being affected across all of its airports, which include Inverness, Dundee, Sumburgh, Kirkwall, Stornoway and Islay.
It told passengers: “Due to a technical issue at Prestwick, flight schedules are currently being impacted across all our airports. Please contact your airline for the latest flight information.”
British Airways and easyJet are among the airlines reporting disruption, with cancellations as well as delays recorded across the UK. Aviation analysts Cirium said 24 flights had been cancelled across UK airports by Monday morning, although many services continued to operate.
The latest problem comes less than two weeks after a separate failure in the UK air traffic control system caused widespread disruption and more than 2,000 flight cancellations.
NATS said that incident on 8 September was caused by a software defect in part of its National Airspace System. The organisation stressed that Monday’s problem at Prestwick is unrelated.
Passengers travelling from Scottish airports today (Monday 21 September) are being advised to check the latest status of their flight directly with their airline before travelling to the airport.