Air Traffic Control Disruption

Greg Smith Excerpts

Thursday 10th September 2026 Commons Chamber

[Greg Smith (Mid Buckinghamshire) (Con)]

(Urgent Question): To ask the Secretary of State for Transport if she will make a statement on the failure of the United Kingdom’s air traffic control system and the resulting disruption to flights and passengers.

[The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Transport (Keir Mather)]

Good morning, Madam Deputy Speaker. I will ensure that your comments are relayed.

May I begin by again apologising to passengers across the United Kingdom who faced significant disruption as a result of the issues that impacted NATS’s operation on 8 September, resulting in delays and cancellations for hundreds of thousands of passengers, as well as the disruption that it has caused for industry? Let me be clear that disruption of this kind is absolutely unacceptable.

To provide some context to the House, at around lunch time on 8 September NATS experienced an issue with its flight processing system at its Swanwick centre affecting the data that was available to controllers. The disruption had a significant impact across the UK aviation network resulting in widespread delays, cancellations and diversions. NATS worked hard to fix the issue, but that took time as the systems needed to be tested to ensure that they had fully recovered and operations could safely return to normal. My officials were in regular contact with NATS, airlines and airports during the incident to understand the issues impacting them and to offer Government support, such as granting night flight alleviations to support recovery at regulated airports including Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted.

NATS has confirmed that it was a technical issue and it does not believe it to be cyber-related. The Secretary of State and I met Martin Rolfe yesterday, and we have agreed that he will send a report to us by Wednesday 16 September setting out the cause of the incident and the actions being taken to ensure that this cannot happen again. The Secretary of State has also asked the Civil Aviation Authority to conduct an independent review to establish cause and to ensure that our air traffic control systems can get passengers to where they need to be, with an update to be provided to me within six months. We will work closely with both organisations as well as airlines and airports to ensure that lessons are learned and that any necessary improvements are implemented.

This morning, I met representatives from Unite the union to hear directly about the impact of the incident on airport and airline staff and to discuss broader issues with them relating to the abuse of frontline transport workers. I express my and the Secretary of State’s gratitude to all those staff at our airports and airlines who provided support to passengers whose journeys were disrupted over the past few days. Our sympathies remain with all those passengers who have experienced delays to their travel plans or cancellations.

[Greg Smith]

Over 2,000 flights cancelled, with more than 150,000 passengers affected; delays, disruption and pain; embarrassment for Britain—what an absolute mess! As you said, Madam Deputy Speaker, there was no offer of a statement from the Government, hence this urgent question from the Conservative Benches.

Nothing sums up the situation facing real people this week better than Martin Brundle’s scathing post on Tuesday:

“Nine hours and counting sitting on a plane which has travelled nowhere. At a remote parking bay, no food throughout, and mother/baby and a person with a medical condition desperate to get off. As is everyone else. Toilets no longer available as blocked. No sign of steps or buses. And that’s before the wait for luggage. Pathetic and dangerous lack of corporate contingency and responsibility.”

Is the Minister not embarrassed? A report by 16 September, which takes us into recess, and six months then to fully diagnose the problem—that is not good enough. A third failure deserves immediate action, not delaying tactics.

The Government have a considerable say in how NATS operates. Ministers cannot suddenly discover the virtues of arm’s length government when something goes wrong in an organisation of which the taxpayer owns 49%. Passengers have heard before that lessons will be learned, reviews commissioned and improvements made; they do not want another sorry story of apologies and assurances while everyone waits for the next failure.

A cyber-attack has been ruled out, so exactly what did happen? Was it a software failure? Were sufficient engineers available on site? Were previous recommendations actually implemented? If they were, why on earth are we back here again? Why are airlines and airports lacking suitable contingency plans for when NATS fails—when Government fails—and there is no Government support on the ground? The Secretary of State needs to take responsibility, get a grip of this mess and ensure that this time lessons are not simply learned but acted upon.

[Keir Mather]

I thank the shadow Minister for his questions. He asks me for more detail about what exactly happened, given that a cyber-attack has now been ruled out. The disruption was caused by a technical issue in NATS’s Swanwick flight processing system, which affected the processing of flight plans used by data controllers. NATS advises that the problem was affecting the flight processing system and the data that was being fed into controller radar displays. A fix was implemented later in the day, but recovery took time, as NATS needed to test that the system was safe.

The shadow Minister is right to raise the experience of Martin and the other hundreds of thousands of passengers across the United Kingdom who were adversely affected. That raises serious questions about contingency and resilience planning at our airports, and I am determined to have conversations about that with the CAA, NATS, airlines and airports in the coming days.

The shadow Minister criticises the fact that it will take around a week to get the report back. It is incredibly important that we take the time to figure out exactly what happened, because ultimately this is about aviation safety. It is about making sure that the UK can retain its reputation for getting passengers to where they need to go while protecting their safety. He asked about the report coming back over recess; I am happy to return after recess to answer any questions that hon. Members may have about the issue.

There is a broader question about the CAA being asked to conduct an urgent review and report back within six months, and whether that is the right timeline. I remind hon. Members that after the largest recent outage, in 2023, it took two and a half years for the CAA to fully assess the implications and all the technical improvements and requirements that were needed as a result of that incident. It provided 34 recommendations, all of which have been implemented. A six-month timeframe to get to the bottom of what is a highly technical matter and an incident of disruption is proportionate and timely, and will allow us to react quickly, with stringent ministerial oversight.

The shadow Minister asks Ministers to take control of the situation and exercise effective oversight on behalf of passengers—that is exactly what we are doing.