UK-bound Aussie travellers are warned to expect delays as air traffic control issues affected flights into and out of the United Kingdom’s airspace yesterday, leaving hundreds of thousands of passengers stranded.
With 500 services cancelled or delayed, air traffic control issues impacted all airports and around 10 per cent of daily flights nationally, including services from Ireland.
A network-wide technical issue was blamed for the chaos, which occurred local time yesterday on a UK summer bank holiday.
Delays of up to 12 hours and flight cancellations across inbound and outbound services met British holidaymakers due to depart or return to the UK.
The Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade (DFAT) advises Australian travellers to check directly with their airlines for updates.
Rectified after four hours of inputting flight plans manually, the flow-on effects of the long outage may cause travel delays for several days due to disruption to flight crews and planes.
The UK’s two largest airports – London Heathrow and London Gatwick – advise passengers to confirm their flights are operating before heading to the airport.
EasyJet cancelled almost all overseas departures from Gatwick, however, the airport planned to operate its regular schedule on Tuesday.
London Heathrow Airport is also one of the world’s busiest airports, serving 58.2 million passengers in 2022.
