United Kingdom: very disrupted air traffic, flights canceled or delayed at several French airports

2023-08-28 20:28:13

Many flights to and from the UK are experiencing long delays on Monday due to a “technical glitch” which has been identified and corrected, UK air traffic control authorities said.

At Paris-Charles de Gaulle and Paris-Orly airports, several flights to British cities such as London, Manchester, Bristol, Dublin and Edinburgh have been canceled. Same observation on the side of the airports of Nice (Alpes-Maritimes), Toulouse (Haute-Garonne) or Nantes (Loire-Atlantique). Air France explains to the Parisian having canceled six flights to the United Kingdom on Monday.

“We currently have a technical problem and have put in place traffic restrictions (flights) for security reasons”, announced the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) in a press release published at 1 p.m. Paris. “Until our engineers fix this, flight plans are entered manually, which means we can’t process them at the same rate,” they said.

Day back from vacation for the British

In a new statement later, NATS said it had “identified and remedied the technical issue”. “We are now working with airlines and airports to manage the affected flights as best as possible” by this breakdown, according to this press release.

The incident came as Monday is a public holiday in the UK and concludes a long weekend for Britons, many of whom are returning from vacation. The country’s biggest airport, Heathrow, said it was “working closely” with air traffic authorities and other airports to “minimize the impact” of the outage on passengers. “We are seeing delays and cancellations are likely,” reported Gatwick Airport on the X network (ex-Twitter).

“Like all airlines using British airspace, our flights are seriously disrupted by a major problem affecting air traffic control,” warned British Airways. “We had to make some significant changes to our schedule today,” she said.

Eurostar provides an additional train between Paris and London

Many other airlines, including EasyJet and Ryanair, have also announced delays and cancellations and testimonials from travelers stranded across Europe are mounting. “Currently on a plane on the tarmac at Budapest airport,” wrote BBC presenter Gabby Logan. “We have just been told that the airspace is closed. We could stay there for 12 hours, ”she added on the X network (ex-Twitter).

For its part, the cross-Channel railway company Eurostar indicated that it would run an additional train on Monday evening between Paris and London “due to the disruptions affecting airlines in the United Kingdom”.