Search icon

News

28th Aug 2023

Irish flights face delays and cancellations due to air traffic control issue

JOE

Dublin airport delays

By Fiona Frawley

The UK’s National Air Traffic Control Service are working to resolve the issue.

Passengers in Dublin, Cork and Shannon and Knock airports are facing delays and rescheduled flights as the National Air Traffic Control Service (NATS) work to resolve a technical issue.

The service have stressed that UK airspace is not closed, but air traffic flow restrictions are in place to ensure safety.

It’s a particularly busy travel day for UK airports, today being the country’s summer bank holiday.

As reported by ABC News, NATS has not given an estimate of how long it would take to fix the problem, or what had caused it, but European air traffic authority Eurocontrol has warned of “very high” delays because of a “flight data processing system failure” in the U.K.

NATS are currently investigating the air traffic issue in the UK.

Airports both inside and out of the UK have said passengers can expect delays and cancellations.

Dublin Airport have advised travellers to contact their airlines for the latest status of their flights.

Speaking to Sky News, Aviation analyst and former BA pilot Alastair Rosenschein said that the air traffic system may have suffered “some kind of patchy failure as opposed to a total shutdown,” and has predicted that “disruption will be quite severe at some airports” with the potential for some U.K.-bound flights to land in other European countries in order to reduce the flow of inbound planes.

Related articles:

LISTEN: You Must Be Jokin’ with Aideen McQueen – Faith healers, Coolock craic and Gigging as Gaeilge