Airlines question NATS reliability after second technical fault in two weeks
A technical fault at NATS’s Prestwick control centre in Scotland disrupted flights across the United Kingdom on Monday, prompting pointed criticism from carriers about the resilience of the country’s air traffic control infrastructure.
NATS, the UK’s national air traffic services provider, said the fault had hit its Prestwick facility — described in company materials as its second control centre — and that engineers were continuing to investigate. The disruption affected Scottish airports most heavily, along with services in Northern Ireland and northern England. “Our engineers are continuing to investigate the issue at our Prestwick centre in Scotland,” a NATS spokesperson said. “Airports south of Manchester are broadly unaffected, however flights heading north and flights departing Scottish airports are now subject to some delay.”
The spokesperson added: “Passengers should check with their airlines. This is unrelated to the issue two weeks ago. We apologise for the disruption.”
Airlines did not share that framing. easyJet, which had flights affected by the fault, used the incident to question NATS’s reliability. “A Nats air traffic control system failure in its Prestwick centre is causing delays to flights with some unable to operate,” an easyJet spokesperson said. “This, once again, calls into question the resilience of Nats’s systems and demonstrates the need for firm actions to prevent these repeated failures.”
British Airways struck a more measured note but echoed the concern. “Yet another technical fault with Nats means some of our customers are likely to experience disruption to their travel plans today,” a BA spokesperson said. “This is disappointing, and while it is an issue that is entirely out of our control, we’re doing everything we can to limit the impact on customers and are keeping them updated.”
According to aviation analysts Cirium, a total of 24 flights had been cancelled across UK airports by the time of the carrier statements, though many flights continued to operate. The Prestwick incident follows a separate NATS outage at the agency’s other UK control centre in England less than two weeks earlier that disrupted travel for hundreds of thousands of passengers.
Three days before Monday’s fault, NATS published an initial report into that earlier incident, pledging to “continually improve the critical service we provide.” The proximity of the two faults drew a sharp response from easyJet, whose statement framed Monday’s disruption as evidence of a recurring pattern rather than an isolated event.