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Heathrow airport in London is hit with more flight cancellations following an air traffic failure

On Thursday, at least 16 flights were cancelled to and from London Heathrow Airport. This was a day following widespread disruptions caused by technical issues with Britain's air-traffic control system.

National Air Traffic Services, which controls air traffic for planes in UK airspace as well as the eastern part North Atlantic, announced on Wednesday that its systems are fully operational and capacity has returned to normal following the switch to a backup system.

Cirium, an aviation analytics company, reported that the second NATS outage in two years also affected Gatwick Airport, near London, Edinburgh Airport, Scotland, and other locations. As of 1830 GMT, Wednesday, there were 122 cancellations.

Heidi Alexander, Transport Minister, said that she would be meeting with NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe to "understand what happened and prevent a reoccurrence".

Alexander, a social media user on X, wrote that NATS works closely with airports and airlines to clear up the backlog.

Heathrow’s website indicated that 16 flights were cancelled Thursday, including those to and from New York, Berlin and Toronto, as well as departures.

In March, the airport, Britain's biggest and Europe's busiest was also affected by an electrical fire in a sub-station, which left thousands of passengers stranded.

Neal McMahon, Ryanair's Chief Operating Officer, called for NATS' Rolfe resigning. He said that no lessons were learned since the August 20, 2023 disruption brought about by a malfunction in the automatic processing flight plans.

NATS did not respond immediately to an inquiry about McMahon’s remarks, despite apologising to those who were affected by the incident on Wednesday. (Reporting and editing by William Schomberg, Catarina demony)

(source: Reuters)