Air traffic restored after technical fault halts flights at Heathrow, Gatwick and across UK

A technical issue at Britain’s air traffic control provider disrupted flights at major airports across London and other parts of the country on Wednesday. Although the issue has now been resolved, it led to delays and forced many travellers to change their plans.

“Our systems are fully operational and air traffic capacity is returning to normal,” NATS, Britain’s ATC, said in a post on X.

“Departures at all airports have resumed and we are working with affected airlines and airports to clear the backlog safely. We apologise to everyone affected by this issue.”
Outgoing flights from airports across the United Kingdom were disrupted by air traffic control technical problems, several airports confirmed on Wednesday (July 30). Inbound flights continued to land, according to London’s Gatwick Airport.

✅ A technical issue impacting NATS that affected outbound flights across the UK has now been resolved. As a result there are some delays at London Gatwick while operations resume.

Passengers should check the status of their flights with their airline.

Check @NATS feed for the… pic.twitter.com/YCxrzCV4Iy

— London Gatwick LGW (@Gatwick_Airport) July 30, 2025

Monitoring platform Flightradar24 showed that no flights were taking off from UK airports at one point, although planes were later seen departing from several hubs.

An air traffic control centre managing 200,000 square miles of airspace experienced a “technical issue,” the country’s National Air Traffic Services (NATS) said in a statement.