Passengers travelling to and from Scotland face delays and cancellations tonight after a fault in the UK’s air traffic control system disrupted flights across the country.
Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen were among the airports affected on Tuesday 8 September, with airlines working to recover schedules after hours of disruption.
Air traffic control provider NATS said at 7.30pm that the technical problem had been resolved and it was operating normally, but work was continuing to clear the backlog.
“Recovery from today’s system issue has taken longer than we had hoped,” it said.
NATS apologised for the continuing disruption and urged passengers to check their flight status with their airline. The fault affected its flight processing system, with engineers implementing a fix earlier in the afternoon.
By early evening, 29 flights at Edinburgh and 18 at Glasgow had been cancelled. Glasgow Prestwick also warned passengers of possible delays and cancellations.
Edinburgh Airport warned that restoring the air traffic control system would not immediately end the disruption.
“Some knock-on disruption is likely throughout the day as operations recover across the UK,” the airport said, advising travellers to continue checking with their airline for the latest information.
Across the UK, at least 625 flights had been cancelled, according to Flightradar24 figures. Services operated by British Airways, easyJet, KLM and Lufthansa were among those affected.
Highlands and Islands Airports Limited was also displaying a warning that the air traffic services issue was affecting London flights, directing passengers to their airline for updates.
NATS had confirmed during the afternoon that UK airspace remained open and flights were still departing, despite the restrictions caused by the fault.
Passengers with flights booked tonight should continue to follow their airline’s instructions as the backlog is cleared.