Holiday passengers hit by new flights nightmare

HUNDREDS of thousands of travellers faced summer holiday airport chaos yesterday when an air traffic control fault caused huge disruption.

- By Allister Hagger

The afternoon glitch hit flights across the UK at one of the busiest times of the year, causing numerous cancellations and long delays.

Major airports, including Heathrow, Gatwick, Liverpool, Newcastle, Edinburgh, Birmingham and Luton, grounded flights. Other planes due to arrive had to go into holding patterns or divert elsewhere.

Resign

Britain's air traffic controller, Nats, said the “technical issue” happened at its Swanwick ATC hub in Southampton. Flights resumed later after engineers “restored the system that was affected”.