A technical failure affecting NATS air traffic control services at its Prestwick Centre in Ayrshire has caused disruption to flights operating to and from Aberdeen International Airport, marking the second such incident for the UK’s primary air navigation service provider in as many weeks. The issue, described as a connectivity problem specific to the system in Scotland, has now been resolved, but airports cautioned that residual delays and disruptions were anticipated across the aviation network.
NATS, which manages air traffic across the North of England, Scotland, and a significant portion of the North Atlantic airspace from its Prestwick Centre, confirmed the resolution of the fault. The centre is a critical hub, handling over one million aircraft annually.
An AGS Airports spokesperson confirmed the impact on their operations. AGS Airports owns and operates Aberdeen International, Glasgow, and Southampton airports.
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“A technical issue affecting NATS air traffic control services at the Prestwick Centre has now been resolved,” the spokesperson stated. “However, some services operating to and from our airports, particularly Glasgow Airport, may continue to experience delays and disruption due to the knock-on impact across the network.”
The recent incident at Prestwick on 21 September 2026 follows a separate, more extensive system outage at NATS’s main Swanwick control centre earlier in the month. That prior event, attributed to a software defect affecting flight data processing, led to over 2,000 flight cancellations and widespread disruption across the UK aviation sector. NATS has clarified that the Prestwick connectivity problem was unrelated to the earlier software failure at Swanwick.
The repeated technical issues at NATS facilities have drawn scrutiny from the aviation industry, underscoring concerns about system resilience and the potential for significant operational and financial repercussions for airlines and passengers alike.
