Monday’s Air Traffic Control malfunction mostly affected short-haul services, with the knock-on effects still being felt around Europe. It stemmed from a malfunction that meant flight plans had to be inputted manually, slowing down the system to a crawl on a day of huge demand.
Heathrow’s cancellations today mainly hit its early morning first wave of flights, particularly from British Airways. At Gatwick, there was a spate of easyJet cancellations this morning on routes mainly using aircraft not based at the airport, such as Berlin or Milan. Stansted showed a handful of cancellations from Ryanair to both domestic and European routes.
Outside the London area, things are returning to normal. At Manchester, easyJet has almost fully recovered its schedules and other carriers appear to be operating normally. However, Newcastle had a spate of early morning cancellations and delays, including a near-five hour delay for British Airways’ Heathrow flight, but now appears to be operating normally.
Glasgow’s domestic connections were also affected earlier today but schedules are moving towards normal, while Belfast International appeared to have no cancellations.
In Europe, Palma airport is showing some significant delays, including an eight-hour delay for a Tui Glasgow flight. Alicante shows only one cancellation, this afternoon’s easyJet flight to Bristol. Corfu has one Jet2 cancellation, as does Faro.
The knock-on follows the removal of 790 departing and 785 arriving flights yesterday, equivalent to 27% of arrivals and departures, with Heathrow worst hit, followed by Gatwick and Manchester, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium. Airlines were urged to improve communication with the UK trade following the incident.
