MORE Scottish flights – including from both Edinburgh and Glasgow Airport – have been cancelled after air traffic control issues.
Travellers have been warned that they may face continued disruption until Friday despite the issue being fixed since Monday afternoon.
So far, that has been the case with numerous flights from Edinburgh and Glasgow already cancelled this morning as Scots have been urged to check with their airline to find out if they have or will be affected.
Analysis of flight data websites by the PA news agency shows at least 281 flights – including departures and arrivals – were cancelled on Tuesday at the UK’s six busiest airports.
This consisted of 75 at Gatwick, 74 at Heathrow, 63 at Manchester, 28 at Stansted, 23 at Luton and 18 at Edinburgh.
Ryanair boss Michael O’Leary slammed National Air Traffic Services (Nats) for the “unacceptable” disruption caused over the past two days.
In a video message, the chief executive described Monday as “a very difficult day” with 250 flights cancelled, while a further 70 were axed on Tuesday.
On Monday morning, passengers were first warned that a UK air traffic control failure meant flight plans had to be input manually by controllers.
By Monday afternoon, 232 flights departing UK airports had been cancelled and 271 arriving flights, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
This equates to about 8% of all expected departures and 9% of expected arrivals, Cirium added.
Nats, the country’s leading provider of air traffic control, said at 3.15pm that it had “identified and remedied” the technical issue affecting its systems and it was working with airlines and airports to support affected flights.
On Monday Juliet Kennedy, operations director at Nats, said the issue meant the automatic system that provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route had stopped working, and what happened will be investigated “very thoroughly”.
She also apologised for the impact on people’s travel plans.
Kennedy added: “The issue we had earlier meant that our automatic system, which provides controllers with details of every aircraft and its route, wasn’t working. Instead, to manage safety, we had to limit the number of flights we could manage.
“Our teams worked hard to resolve the problem, and I’m pleased to say it was fixed earlier on this afternoon. However, it will take some time for flights to return to normal.
“And we will continue to work with the airlines and the airports to recover the situation. Our absolute priority is safety and we will be investigating very thoroughly what happened today.
“Again, I would like to apologise for the impact on the travelling public and to tell you that our teams will continue to work to get you on your way as soon as we can.”
