UK air traffic failure grounds over 600 flights

A technical failure in Britain's air traffic control systems caused major disruptions at airports, with over 600 flights cancelled and tens of thousands of passengers affected across the UK and Europe. The NATS system glitch on September 8 led to 625 flight cancellations, with London hardest hit at about 60% of all cancellations. Heathrow saw 132 departures cancelled and 199 delayed, while Gatwick had around 250 delays. Other affected airports included Manchester, Stansted, Luton, Birmingham, Aberdeen, Glasgow, and Edinburgh. Ryanair passengers faced disruptions affecting roughly 65,000 people, with knock-on delays reported in Dublin. NATS said it implemented a fix and the system began recovering, but warned that clearing the backlog would take several hours. UK airspace remained open, though airports had not returned to normal operations by evening. Earlier, airlines and airport operators had urged the European Commission to temporarily suspend the new EU biometric border control system due to long queues and overloaded border services.