The outage caused significant disruptions across the UK, with Heathrow, Gatwick, Manchester, and Birmingham airports being the most affected. Heathrow, one of Europe's busiest hubs, temporarily suspended departures around noon on Tuesday, with operations resuming and then facing further delays in the afternoon.
The technical failure also impacted operations at Irish airports. Several other UK airports, including Manchester, Luton, Stansted, Bristol, and Belfast City, reported a recovery of flights on Wednesday, although Bristol, Belfast, and Luton continued to experience indirect effects.
NATS CEO Martin Rolf admitted that resolving the issue took longer than expected and apologized to the public. He promised a full investigation into the cause of the technical failure.
The British government holds a 49% stake in NATS. This incident marks the third technical failure for the company in three years, following previous outages in 2023 and 2025.