HERE are the flight cancellations caused by the latest NATS failure in Scotland

Scotland’s National Air Traffic Services technical failure, on September 21, 2026, caused severe disruption and travel chaos at Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, forcing flight suspensions, widespread delays, and multiple cancellations.

The technical breakdown originated early in the morning at the NATS Prestwick Centre in Scotland, which handles flight data processing for Scottish airspace, Northern Ireland, northern England, and parts of the North Atlantic. To safely manage aircraft, NATS slashed the capacity of Scottish-controlled airspace by 60pc, triggering immediate backlogs.

At Edinburgh and Glasgow airports, terminal buildings became tightly packed with long queues as arrivals and departures were hit with severe delays. Multiple flights had to be cancelled entirely, leaving hundreds of travelers stranded. Although NATS confirmed the core connectivity issue was resolved and airspace restrictions were lifted around 11:00 AM UTC, the operational damage was already done.

Edinburgh Airport Chief Executive Gordon Dewar warned that because aircraft and crews are now displaced and out of position, the disruption is highly likely to ripple through into Tuesday, September Passengers currently scheduled to fly are strongly urged to verify the status of their flights directly with their airlines before making their way to the airport.

This incident has provoked fierce anger across the aviation industry because it marks the second major NATS failure in just 13 days, following a massive software defect on September 8 that axed over 2,000 flights. NATS maintains that the two failures are entirely unrelated, attributing today’s outage to a connectivity issue.

Major carriers including easyJet, British Airways, and Ryanair have condemned the lack of resilience in England’s national infrastructure. Ryanair publicly demanded the immediate resignation or sacking of NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe, noting that over 140 of their northern flights suffered delays exceeding three hours.

The cancellations include five rotations to the Belfast airports and one rotation (departure and arrival flight) to Derry.