- NATS report finds air traffic control disruption due to software fault
- Legacy defect caused 2,000 flight cancellations
- Glitch occurred within a millisecond
- NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe apologised but rejected resignation calls
- Westminster Transport minister called disruption completely unacceptable
A preliminary report released by National Air Traffic Services on 18 September 2026 has revealed that the widespread flight chaos on 8 September 2026 was caused by a legacy software defect. The glitch which occurred within the space of a millisecond corrupted critical flight data and led to the cancellation of more than 2,000 flights disrupting travel for over 300,000 passengers.
The failure stemmed from a small subsection of coding in the National Airspace System. The glitch occurred while processing a manual request for an aircraft identification code used by radar to track airborne flights. Simultaneously the system received a message for a higher-priority activity which briefly paused the code request. When the software attempted to resume processing the aircraft code a previously unknown legacy defect caused the output to corrupt.
NATS Chief Executive Martin Rolfe apologised for the meltdown but rejected calls for his resignation. He clarified that the incident was unrelated to a separate major system outage in August 2023 and ruled out cyberattacks or military flight disruptions. England Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander called the disruption completely unacceptable. Ryanair criticised NATS’ resilience and demanded financial compensation forms in incurred costs.
